Measurement of the Efficiency of the Turkish Competition Authority: An Application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)

In all over the world, competition authorities play the most important role in designing competition policies of the countries. In Turkey, Competition Authority (Rekabet Kurumu) is authorized as the regulatory, body to establish and monitor the competition in markets. Measurement of the efficiency levels of competition authorities is crucial for designing better competition policies. In this study, the efficiency of the Turkish Competition Authority is explored in comparison with other authorities operating in the world by employing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-a non-parametric efficiency measurement methodology. Results of the analyses suggest that in 2015 and 2016 the Turkish Competition Authority performed with a low efficiency level compared to the other authorities in question. One of the reasons behind the poor performance of the Authority seems to be the managerial problems experienced in the year 2015. If it is not monitored and supported sufficiently, similar managerial and performance problems will be probably occurred in the coming years. In addition to the managerial problems in 2015, we identify other other reasons for poor performance of the Authority and suggest some policies to fix them.