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Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

jacobfilipp.com

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

#181

Post by chaostheory »

Scoundreller wrote: post #97
chaostheory wrote: post #79

Isn’t the root of the problem Canadian protectionism? By law, it’s near impossible to have new (foreign) competitors in the Canadian market. Same for industries like telecom.

No laws against foreign grocers. Has been like shooting fish in a barrel for Wal-Mart and Costco. But we do protect certain specific industries to our own detriment (e.g. we’ve knee-capped dairy to the point that we hardly export any, while in the free(r)-market, we export 80% of our pulse crops, 90% of our canola crop, 3rd largest wheat exporter in the world). https://www.ecodainc.ca/pulses/ https://www.ccga.ca/advo…

You’re right and I’m wrong, and there are other issues

https://retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2024/07/why-foreig...

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

#182

Post by huitzitziltzin »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #176
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #92

‘’’ 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.

Well… what do you want to happen ?

You can publish some correlations between prices. (Remember there is no known method where you can look at a time series of prices across stores and say “that’s collusion!”). And hey if you have 10,000 - 100,000 products per store you probably have correlations as high as you want. None of that will actually show collusion or more importantly suggest a policy response.

Even very high correlation _within a category_ across stores isn’t going to do that. Say you find price movements in tomato paste across all N chains are 0.95… ok now what? There are 10,000 or 2,000 product categories so you found a high correlation in one of them what do you want to do about it?

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

#183

Post by huitzitziltzin »

jfil wrote: post #102
huitzitziltzin wrote: post #92

‘’’ 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…

Hey man, I'm just creating the hammer - you can throw it in the lake, make a treehouse for your kid, smash a window, up to you :-D

Actually I’m going to add to your reading list:

“ A Study of Cartel Stability: The Joint Executive Committee, 1880-1886” By Rob Porter (northwestern)

That paper is a classic and I hope porter gets the Nobel prize for the work he has done.

In that paper, we actually know for sure that there was collusion. Porter is trying to assess how hard it was to sustain collusion using the data. (One thing you are not crediting in your website is that collusion is hard to sustain bc all of the colluders have the incentive to cheat!) It takes a lot of assumptions and serious econometric chops to make the analysis credible.

That paper is 40 years old but what you’re really trying to do with your project is called “structural industrial organization.” It’s been around in the economics literature for a long time. It’s my field. It’s hard.

If you want a recent overview which still won’t answer the question the way you wanted to, get “the handbook of industrial organization” edited by hortacsu et al, or the book draft “empirical methods in industrial organization” by aguirregabiria (who is at U Toronto!) or “quantitative techniques for competition and antitrust” by Davis and Garcés.

Good luck.

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

#184

Post by nightowl_games »

gruez wrote: post #20
arcticbull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what actually works great for reducing the price of cell plans in Canada is a public option. There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line. Manitobans should be absolutely up in arms over the privatization of Manitoba Telecom. Canada has a ton of land and just not that many p…

>There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line. Source? Looking at sasktel's website and rogers' website, this claim does not pass the sniff test. Their "basic" plan is $60/month (BYOD) for 15GB of data, whereas rogers gives you 75GB for $65. Even if you don't use 15GB of data and tha…

I live in Saskatchewan and pay ~50$ for 10GB of data/month. I'm not on a Sasktel plan, as I found a cheaper option through one of the privatized networks, however Sasktel has a new subsidiary: Lum Mobile, to compete with the cheap plans like what I'm using. I know someone who has some discount at Sasktel and pays ~50$/month for 75GB(!) of data.

When I was in toronto the guy at the hotel had a 306 (saskatchewan) phone number because it was cheaper.

Sasktel is a great provider. I have fiber to the home in my house, for instance.

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

#185

Post by nightowl_games »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Co-operatives

They are not a private company, they run the store as a member owned cooperative. I'm a member, for instance. I have a number and get a discount and some cash back at the end of the year.

If this theory of collusion is true, the coop should be cheaper then right? It's not! Loblaws is typically the cheapest.

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

#186

Post by transcriptase »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #92

‘’’ 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…

Yeah we have a competition bureau that’s known for never doing its actual job.

The fact that they keep approving mergers and acquisitions in telecom, banking, and groceries despite those being some of the most comically oligopoly-esque industries within a country on earth shows just how tragically wrong you are.

If there was 2 telecom companies left standing in Canada, our competition bureau would pretend to study their desire to merge for a year before approving it, under the condition that their collection of subsidiary brands pretend to be different companies while advertising.

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

#187

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #182
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well… what do you want to happen ? You can publish some correlations between prices. (Remember there is no known method where you can look at a time series of prices across stores and say “that’s collusion!”). And hey if you have 10,000 - 100,000 products per store you probably have correlations as high as you want. None of that will actually show collusion or more importantly suggest a policy response. Even very hig…

I think there are a lot of people in desperate situations who feel like the deck is stacked against them. They end up lashing out in completely irrational, often violent ways. You see them on the news all the time.

What I want to happen is for those people to realize that they're not alone, and that the whole world is not working to put them at a disadvantage. Really, it's a rather small group of people who are setting the rest of us up to be rats in a maze with no exit. Then I want us to find those people, and go after their bottom line. Nothing violent, just like... welding the doors shut on opening day, that sort of thing.

It might be less rational than something more restrained like getting a law degree and working in the system to bring them to actual justice. But it has... a glimmer of rationality. You're no longer an insane lone wolf lashing out against an impossible situation... now you're a shitty activist, and even if you're not acting with a cohort, you know that cohort is out there. You're not stuck, you're not alone, there's a path forward--you can aspire towards being a less shitty activist.

But it requires a justifiable target, a representative of the untenable situation. A list of potential enemies that's far less than everybody. Once that list exists, I want companies to compete to not appear on that list.

Markets work without being rational, as does evolution (some predation required). This would be the same.

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

#188

Post by randomdata »

canadiantim wrote: post #153
motohagiography wrote: post #50

canada's attitude toward competition is different than that of the US though. our agricultural products (dairy, wheat, maple syrup, and to a lesser extent retail beer and alcohols) are controlled by state monopolies who set prices. the reason food is so expensive is because of fuel costs from the last few years, which were further not-helped by both an increase in federal taxes on fuel and the semi-official policy of…

Wheat is no longer government controlled in Canada, the wheat board was sold off back in 2015 and no longer is the sole purchaser.

The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), which only ever served the prairie provinces, was sold off. The Ontario Wheat Board is still in operation (now known as Grain Farmers of Ontario) and declared an end to the single desk in 1999, which was phased out by the early 2000s.

GFO continued to run an optional pool until the 2020 crop year, but that has now also come to an end. I can't imagine anyone was still using it. It was a product of a bygone era.

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

#189

Post by randomdata »

motohagiography wrote: post #50

canada's attitude toward competition is different than that of the US though. our agricultural products (dairy, wheat, maple syrup, and to a lesser extent retail beer and alcohols) are controlled by state monopolies who set prices. the reason food is so expensive is because of fuel costs from the last few years, which were further not-helped by both an increase in federal taxes on fuel and the semi-official policy of…

Your list isn't quite right. I produce in two of those agriculture sectors in Canada. I'm able to charge whatever price I see fit for my products, independent of anyone else producing something similar. About the only thing that comes close in the one instance, which may be what you're thinking of, is if I decide to sell my product through the government store (optional) I contractually cannot sell my product at a different price in my store – but I still get to set the price used in both places. There are no encumberments to speak of in the other case. It is about as "free market" as it gets.

At the same time, you missed eggs and poultry, which are also under supply management like dairy. If we're to be technical it the milk/egg/chicken/turkey marketing board is responsible for managing the supply and therefore prices, which is decidedly not a government entity, but the existence is granted by the government so we'll give you that one.

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