The OECD Growth Study and other empirical work demonstrate that competition in product markets plays a significant role in the process of economic growth. Korea has succeeded in transforming itself from one of the poorest countries in the world in the 1960s to an important industrial nation over the period of one generation (Figure 1.1). This has been accomplished despite government measures over the past forty years to accelerate growth, focusing on export-oriented manufacturing industries in which scale economies are important, which tended to weaken competition to some extent. The outstanding economic performance suggests that there may have been some positive results from these policies, perhaps because they enabled Korea to ...