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Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

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Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#161

Post by arcticbull »

sys32768 wrote: post #98

I live 70 miles from the Canada border where we whine about Canadians crowding our Costco. I roughly counted their plates in one section of the parking lot and about every fifth plate was from Alberta. Edit: I have also witnessed Canadians in awe at how inexpensive was the stack of chewing tobacco they purchased.

> Edit: I have also witnessed Canadians in awe at how inexpensive was the stack of chewing tobacco they purchased.

Sin taxes vary across Canada and across the US. Even within the US the range is $6 to $12 [1] per pack of cigarettes.

In Canada [2] the range is $8.60 USD to $11.74 USD per pack.

Were they to declare on the way back as required by law, I strongly suspect it would have been cheaper to buy at home.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/cigarette-p...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1307607/canada-regional-...

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#162

Post by arcticbull »

VancouverMan wrote: post #146
dfxm12 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be implying that a public enterprise can't compete so well against private enterprise on price by definition. Why do you think this?

[flagged]

> Canada Post is certainly not cheap for the type and quality of service that's provided.

Can you pay less to send something via UPS or FedEx? I'm pretty sure you can't. Remember Purolator is a Canada Post subsidiary so probably don't count them.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#163

Post by the_cat_kittles »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #157
the_cat_kittles wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isnt the difference that when you have an open dataset, you get many many more eyeballs, and some very passionate ones. and they can make it their hobby, unconstrained by day to day needs of a job. eh?

No. They have to know what they are doing. Also imagine the false discovery rate of with the thousands of products which exist in a grocery store! “Ah look we found collusion in salty snacks between weeks 38 and 45 of 2022 in stores 1, 5 and 13!” Even if you knew what analysis to do (and you don’t) you are going to end up crying wolf a million times and solving no problem at all. Again - a worthy effort but the metho…

ok. i believe you, but hope that your maybe a bit overly pessimistic

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#164

Post by jjmarr »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #119
delichon wrote: post #108

Say I set my apple prices at 0.5 standard deviations below the average prices I can find in the vicinity. Is that an attempt to undercut the market or collude with it? If I set the price to the average, is that collusion or just trying to maximize my profit on apples? If I set it higher than average, is that collusion, or me telling the market that I think I have premium apples? How do you get from correlation to col…

Does that matter except as a philosophical question? The point of a free market in practice is to ensure that sale values are correlated with, and reasonably close to, production costs. If an ostensibly free market is not producing competition which causes that to happen, it's a problem for society; then, it is society's prerogative to use whatever means appropriate to fix it. That could include, depending on the ide…

The point of a free market is to allocate scarce goods and services to the people that need them the most, by raising the price until demand is equal to supply. Raising price decreases demand and increases supply since more people want to sell when the price goes up.

This occurs regardless of how much competition there is.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#165

Post by jml7c5 »

tamimio wrote: post #158

I started with something similar a while ago but stopped as I got busy. It’s something I noticed, and I usually don’t pay much attention to grocery prices, or at least I used to. What made me pay attention was a chocolate bar I used to get for around $4. Then I didn’t buy it for a year, only to find out it’s around $7 now! I always wonder why no one speaks up about that. There are plenty of government employees who a…

The cost of cocoa beans skyrocketed this year because of bad weather. There is a huge production shortfall.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-31/why-cocoa...

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#166

Post by campl3r »

sys32768 wrote: post #98

I live 70 miles from the Canada border where we whine about Canadians crowding our Costco. I roughly counted their plates in one section of the parking lot and about every fifth plate was from Alberta. Edit: I have also witnessed Canadians in awe at how inexpensive was the stack of chewing tobacco they purchased.

that's shocking to me. I, a European, recently spent multiple months on the west coast in the US and Canada, Canada was significantly cheaper. I'd guess West Coast prices in the US are just even more expensive? (Guessing based on them being 5-20x of german prices for basic groceries)

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#167

Post by jfil »

tamimio wrote: post #158

I started with something similar a while ago but stopped as I got busy. It’s something I noticed, and I usually don’t pay much attention to grocery prices, or at least I used to. What made me pay attention was a chocolate bar I used to get for around $4. Then I didn’t buy it for a year, only to find out it’s around $7 now! I always wonder why no one speaks up about that. There are plenty of government employees who a…

I encourage you to initiate those conversations with your friends and acquaintances. They've probably felt that something is going off the rails but might feel disheartened that no one seems to notice. The solution to this problem starts with talking to each other about the existence of the problem.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#168

Post by MichaelZuo »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #157
the_cat_kittles wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isnt the difference that when you have an open dataset, you get many many more eyeballs, and some very passionate ones. and they can make it their hobby, unconstrained by day to day needs of a job. eh?

No. They have to know what they are doing. Also imagine the false discovery rate of with the thousands of products which exist in a grocery store! “Ah look we found collusion in salty snacks between weeks 38 and 45 of 2022 in stores 1, 5 and 13!” Even if you knew what analysis to do (and you don’t) you are going to end up crying wolf a million times and solving no problem at all. Again - a worthy effort but the metho…

You get the top 100 most plausible hunches and then investigate further from there… why focus on proving something in the data itself?

Investigators work on hunches just fine if you pay them enough.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#169

Post by saghm »

bobthepanda wrote: post #101
saghm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is speculation as much of a concern for groceries? Real estate is an asset you can hold onto for a while, but I feel like buying up groceries just means you'll have a lot of expired food pretty soon if you can't find a buyer.

This actually happened to onions in the US so now we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act

This seems vaguely familiar now that I look at it, I must have read it (or an article on a similar phenomenon). Fair enough though, I'd be fine with a regulation like this along with stopping price collusion.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#170

Post by Marsymars »

hello_computer wrote: post #156
Marsymars wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF in Canada grocery stores are also suppliers; about a quarter of sales are of private label items.

Both private-label and name-brand items are produced by 3rd-party suppliers.

Not necessarily, e.g. at various points George Weston Limited has owned commercial dairies and bakeries. They've also bought out suppliers of their private-label items after the suppliers went bankrupt due to insufficient margins.
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