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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

#231

Post by iambateman »

A lot of people are mentioning how hard collusion is to prove.

Perhaps the government should offer a $500,000 incentive to anyone offering information which demonstrates collusion of a sufficient size.

If consumers are getting systematically ripped off at a scale of many billions of dollars, it seems like we should try to just buy that information rather than pay a few dozen Ph.D’s to build models which demonstrate collusion.

Knowing that employees are one email away from the biggest payday of their lives would have a deterrent effect on executive behavior, too.

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

#232

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

hluska wrote: post #228
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 setti…

Yes, I’m sure that welding the doors shut on opening day will really stick it to the man. It certainly won’t horrify the minimum wage employees who go in there to work. What an unbelievably stupid thing to advocate for, much less under the guise of non violence.

Of course there are a million better ways. You could gather some money an pay the employees to strike, for instance. It should depend very heavily on your target. My point is just that if companies are organizing against you, you should organize against the companies. Symmetry. Deterrence. Doing it well... well that's a life's work. The goal is to get the ball rolling and incrementally improve, not expect people to become Ghandi overnight. And at the outset, the credibility of the threat you can present is more important than the direct applicability of your action. We're not even at the point where "how strong of an action is warranted?" is a conversation. So step one is starting that conversation.

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

#233

Post by dredmorbius »

hodder wrote: post #41

"Project Hammer aims to drive more competition and reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector." In order to assess collusion among Canadian Grocers it is important to understand what gross margins have done, as input costs have run up materially as well. Canadian grocer margins have expanded materially, but nowhere near total food inflation costs. While groceries remain a competitive business in many countries,…

Cleaning up your table a bit:

  Date      Value 
  ----      ----- 
  
  2011 Dec   23.18%
  2012 Mar   23.83%
       Jun   23.63%
       Sep   23.29%
       Dec   23.23%
  2013 Mar   23.99%
       Jun   23.64%
       Sep   23.15%
       Dec   23.91%
  2014 Mar   24.51%
       Jun   19.75%
       Sep   26.27%
       Dec   27.63%
  2015 Mar   28.14%
       Jun   27.67%
       Sep   27.05%
       Dec   27.92%
  2016 Mar   28.77%
       Jun   28.24%
       Sep   27.91%
       Dec   28.81%
  2017 Mar   29.45%
       Jun   29.22%
       Sep   29.02%
       Dec   29.82%
  2018 Mar   30.26%
       Jun   30.77%
       Sep   29.94%
       Dec   30.75%
  2019 Mar   30.70%
       Jun   31.00%
       Sep   30.37%
       Dec   30.91%
  2020 Mar   30.86%
       Jun      n/a
       Sep   29.92%
       Dec   30.17%
  2021 Mar   31.15%
       Jun   31.71%
       Sep   31.30%
       Dec   31.76%
  2022 Mar   32.03%
       Jun   32.34%
       Sep   31.48%
       Dec   31.56%
  2023 Mar   32.37%
       Jun   32.22%
       Sep   31.38%
       Dec   32.16%
  2024 Mar   32.80%
       Jun   33.13%

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

#235

Post by danudey »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #4

Not sure if the author is here, but the downloadable SQLite database significantly benefits from applying compression (~75% with gzip). Also, is there a write-up of how they collected the prices? I have wanted to do a similar analysis for years, but immediately gave up realizing I would be spending 95% of my efforts scraping and entity matching. By and large manufacturers seem to go out of their way offer unique SKUs…

With 7z compression level 9, the .sqlite archive comes down to 61 MiB, which is about a 92% file size reduction.

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

#236

Post by winter_blue »

VancouverMan wrote: post #127
FredPret wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your description it sounds as if we're stuck in a local optimum. It's tough to break out of that, but there's a lot of technological change coming our way and that tends to disrupt the status quo.

The numerous problems that Canada is facing today are ultimately caused by government interference. While we've certainly seen technology cause and enable change in the private sector, the public sector can basically just ignore disruptive technologies without any real consequences. If the public sector ever did face any sort of real disruption due to technology, the public sector would likely just regulate away the…

> Decades of awful immigration

Care to defined "awful" here? Is this an euphemism to refer to non-European immigrants?

Canada has done very well with immigration IMO. A far more sensible and welcoming system, and most immigrants integrate and do well in Canada pretty quickly.

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

#237

Post by patcon »

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…

> You can do economic analysis of pricing data, and especially the interaction/correlation of multiple streams of prices across time

Would this be the sort of analysis that measured transfer entropy or granger causality?

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

#238

Post by VancouverMan »

arcticbull wrote: post #162
VancouverMan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

I'm not sure. But I also don't consider Canada Post to be offering comparable service to FedEx and UPS these days, too.

For example, based on my experience and the experiences of other people in Canada I've talked to, Canada Post seems to just deliver a pick-up notice slip, rather than the parcel itself.

It's particularly annoying when the recipient has been available to receive the parcel, but Canada Post doesn't even appear to make an attempt to deliver, although the slip is left behind.

The recipient then has to go down to a Canada Post outlet with the slip to actually receive the parcel.

On the other hand, FedEx, UPS, and other private sector (I, too, would exclude Purolator) couriers consistently manage to deliver parcels directly to me, right into my hands, even if it might occasionally take a second attempt. I haven't had to go to a UPS or FedEx depot in well over a decade.

In my opinion, delivering a parcel directly to the recipient is a different service than delivering the parcel to the same city and then requiring the recipient to complete the job.

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

#239

Post by VancouverMan »

winter_blue wrote: post #236
VancouverMan wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numerous problems that Canada is facing today are ultimately caused by government interference. While we've certainly seen technology cause and enable change in the private sector, the public sector can basically just ignore disruptive technologies without any real consequences. If the public sector ever did face any sort of real disruption due to technology, the public sector would likely just regulate away the…

> Decades of awful immigration Care to defined "awful" here? Is this an euphemism to refer to non-European immigrants? Canada has done very well with immigration IMO. A far more sensible and welcoming system, and most immigrants integrate and do well in Canada pretty quickly.

Bringing in culturally-incompatible foreigners has certainly been a significant problem in Canada.

Bringing in low-skill, low-productivity, and often criminally-inclined foreigners (especially refugees) has also been a significant and socially-costly problem in Canada.

Bringing in foreign "students" has harmed the quality and reputation of Canada's education systems.

Bringing in adult foreigners to do the low-end, part-time jobs that Canadian high school students and university students used to do has hurt Canada economically, and resulted in atrocious service in many retail stores and restaurants.

Bringing in huge numbers of foreigners each year, while simultaneously restricting the construction of new housing, has created severe pricing distortions in the housing and rental markets. These foreigners also put immense strain on the already-insufficient transportation and health care infrastructure.

What you say about "integration" is a myth. A visit to the cities surrounding Vancouver or Toronto will make that very clear, very quickly.

Immigration has been disastrous for Canada.

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

#240

Post by rekabis »

I have been wanting to do something similar to this for years now, in terms of long-term price appreciation against inflation and shrinkflation.

Unfortunately, this would have required product data and in-store price data going back decades. And done likely against the wishes of grocery chains, which would have required volunteers to go in and surreptitiously record prices across the country, not something easily doable without a modern smartphone.

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