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Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

jacobfilipp.com

171–180 of 252 posts

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

#171

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…

At the 2 major chain Canadian grocery stores I regularly visit (Save-On and Superstore) prices can vary wildly every time I'm at the store. With Chocolate bars, coffee and butter the price fluctuations are especially violent.

I'm not up to date on Cocoa or Coffee bean futures, but the Canadian butter supply chain is not so unstable that the price ought to be varying from $5.50 to $8.50 on a regular basis!

I'm not even sure what kind of game it is they're trying to play. Like, what are they hoping to achieve by jerking their customers around this way?

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

#173
post #132
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mergers have been challenged based upon free market competition for decades, and likely longer. Many mergers go forward with government imposed conditions.

Canada has something called the "Efficiencies Defence" for Mergers. My understanding is that it is used to push through harmful (to consumers) mergers by showing that the shareholders of the merging organizations benefit more than consumers are harmed. Therefore, the merger must go through. Truly twisted. https://www.theworldlawgroup.com/membership/news/government-...

https://www.stikeman.com/en-ca/kh/canadian-ma-law/the-role-o...

What are the facts? The most important fact is that only a very small number of deals, of limited consequence to the Canadian economy, have gone ahead because of the defence.

...

Indeed, since 2009, the bureau has, we believe, cited the defence only four times (including one transaction that did not proceed in any event) as the reason for its decision not to challenge a merger. In context, roughly 3,000 transactions were reviewed in that same period.

and

https://mcmillan.ca/insights/publications/federal-court-of-a...

On August 1, 2023, the Federal Court of Appeal released its decision in Secure v Commissioner of Competition,[1] upholding the Competition Tribunal’s order requiring Secure Energy Inc. to divest 29 facilities to remedy the anti-competitive effects in 136 markets in western Canada arising from its July 2021 acquisition of Tervita Corporation.[2] It provides important guidance on the standard to be met to establish an efficiencies defense under the Competition Act.

--

Whatever website or platform you read this on, viewed this on, understand that a simple clause in an act must be interpreted by courts, and taken into consideration with all other aspects of a body of legislation. It also must be taken into account with all other case law.

While there are works to amend this act, as you can see from the links above this clause has very little real world impact.

My thoughts on this is that it is another way to gain outrage clicks, and another way to frame a democracy as failing.

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

#174
post #167

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.

Yeah, I’m guilty of not doing that, which is why I wanted to create some sort of tracker as a personal project. I even got the domain and started scraping some data too. But I agree, it should be one of the main topics that most people talk about because otherwise, it won’t change.

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

#175
post #165

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...

Not the chocolate please!!

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

#176

‘’’ Reach out to me (email “jacob” at this website) if: You can do economic analysis of pricing data, and especially the interaction/correlation of multiple streams of prices across time ‘’’ The item in that quote is significantly, significantly harder than the author is giving it credit for. Canada has a competition policy agency. They are (almost surely) entitled to demand data from firms as part of an investigatio…

Is it necessary to prove it? I think it's sufficient to come up with an unbiased metric for which players are the most likely to be colluding at any given time. That would be a starting point for encouraging them to behave such that they're obviously not colluding: compete louder please, or you'll be at the top of this list.

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#178

Are converging prices a sign of collusion, competition, or is it an orthogonal measure? My impression is price convergence is orthogonal to the collusion-competition dimension.

> 1. Compile a database of historical grocery prices from top grocers’ websites.

> 2. Make the database available in a format that is suitable for academic analysis and for legal action.

Price discovery for any reason is good

I dont think the allegations are worth going into, the dataset should exist regardless

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

#179
Isn't coordinated price setting across a wide range of interchangeable commodities with elastic demand curves a particularly efficient form of price discovery?

What would be a better mechanism of price discovery for such a group of commodities?

I have never viewed an ad match policy with suspicion. Real assets, on the other hand...

Love the data collection project, suspect the foregone conclusion. If we're so convinced already, data may not change anything.

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

#180

There was a website a few years back that posted the prices of Brewers Retail (aka The Beer Store, single buyer of beer in Ontario) in a nicer, spreadsheet like format where you could sort by total price, price per mL, price per case size, etc etc (can’t recall the name of it at the moment). It was great. And transparent, and just data. And were shut down by a threat of a lawsuit. Apparently you can’t do that in Cana…

beerboss.ca picked up the torch
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