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Comment by DrNosferatu | Hacker News Reader

No shit, Sherlock:

In Portugal, for most of 2022 to this day, the price of 1L own/white brand of semi-skimmed milk (one of the most basic and essential staple foods) has been the exact same - to the cent - on all different supermarket chains (Lidl, Audi, Auchan, Jerónimo Martins, Intermarché, Sonae, Dia, etc.) operating here. And, it has risen in steady small increments at exactly the same time in all of them, multiple times. As in, price time evolution correlation = 1.0

If this is not price fixing, I don't know what it is. The regulators just whine and yawn.

And obviously, MBA-types haven't read Numerical Recipes' chapters on random numbers ;)

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I'm not saying there is no price fixing, but this could also be explained by the supermarket chains all using the same suppliers (which is most definitely the case since the dairy market is not as diversivied as one might think; it's dominated by a few big players) and those suppliers already doing cut-throat price competition with razor sharp margins, meaning that if the slightest cost increase happens then it impacts all of them and once one can't take it anymore and raises by a few decimal percentage points, everybody else will immediately do that to.

Ever been to a gas station? That raised the price multiple times a day just like the other gas stations a few hundred yards away? Same principle. Doesn't need price fixing as explanation. They are just all buying the same raw product.

This is nation-wide to some 10 million customers.

For your alternative explanation to be true, it would require that all the 8 retail chains would have the exact same margin by natural, fair chance - and, cumulatively by fair chance, increment prices by exactly the same amount, at exactly the same time...

Better play the lottery.

Why "natural, fair chance"? Of course they see what their competitors charge. That's one of the ingredients of a free market. The quicker they react, the quicker the information is dissipated in the free market.

That is an aspect of alleged price fixing for consumer products I never got.

It's trivial for every large retail store to just send someone to look at their competitor's prices and price at the same mark.

This is not feasible to do for B2B only products, such as bulk LCD panels, so it's a lot easier to prove pre-arranged price-fixing.

It's both. It's definitely both.

>If this is not price fixing, I don't know what it is. The regulators just whine and yawn.

Price matching is not the same as price fixing. Price fixing requires collusion. The distinction is pretty arbitrary but it is there.

If I announced that I'm raising the price 10 cents next week, and everyone decides to follow suit at the same exact time, that isn't price fixing.

Right on the money:

https://youtu.be/Bo2BxTcVp74

Mark Blyth is definitely one of the most clear-sighted economists of today.

Really?

Why did someone downvote this very elucidative video?

Update: My posts on this thread are getting downvoted a lot, and I'm just stating facts! It seems I'm hitting a nerve... :D

Complaining about downvotes is a good way to earn more of them.

What a load of shit.

Downvote yourself asshole...

Weird because Portugal has had a higher inflation rate than the US in 2022 (8.1% vs 6.5%). The same is likely going to be true for 2023 according to projections and current data

https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/economic-surveillance-e...

Negative. In America, the labels set their prices, this was first brought to focus by Coca Cola. They had an issue where the stores were driving the price higher to increase margins. Coca Cola started the five cent advertising campaign where they set the price. You can see this with bread items here, they place the price on the bag / sticker / wrapping technology.

There was a push by the stores to allow them to discard what the manufacturer set the price to, but the courts said no to that. This was the appliance manufacturers effort.

Why the profit margins, governments make is so hard to compete with the established players through regulatory compliance, the incumbents can. I have not seen increased profits in my business, and I had to increase the prices. That was done because of input costs. The manufacturers may be making more because they have found costs savings due to input prices going down Or they increased prices to factor in future increases

Microsoft were blatant about this anticompetitive pricing strategy with Azure.

AWS used to frequently cut prices.

Azure started immediately matching the price cuts exactly.

The tacit message to AWS was don’t cut your price because we’ll immediately remove any competitive advantage you would get from doing it.

AWS largely stopped cutting prices after that.

are you sure that’s not just the result of public price controls on basic products?

Nope. No price controls ever enacted. Only recently, a sales tax exemption on basic staple foods was put in place - just started May 2023. (which will be obviously absorbed into retailer's profits)

And I actually surveyed the price data in person.

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