Posted on 09/08/2005 11:08:53 AM PDT by aynrandy
lol. Those figure are 2003 market share %. And here I thought exxon and bp were tops.. They aint
No gouging at the pumps, IMHO... however, in the case of crude prices, I cannot rule out some degree of froth, owing to hysteria purposely being set forth by those who ought to know better. There is a fine line of legality regarding some of the behaviors undertaken by some of the speculators.
Well, that is the definitive defintion -- if you will -- of scarcity. Also, oil is fungible. You can't track back and lay out the exact costs of drilling etc. It's a traded commodity, is it not?
And what is that difference? It can't be that hard to describe.
I might get outrageous but never wrong :<) ...!
When gas prices go down that just means that BUYERS are gouging. Fine them!
I forgot the antitrust definition of monopoly. 80%? 90% ? market share. In any case, it is MUCH higher than 13.8% market share.
Check out Thomas Sowell, Walt Williams and John Stossel for their many screeds about this - directly about gas or not. Stossel just had 1. So of course has Sowell.
So why not have the govenrment give us FREE GAS! Great Idea, oh EagleUSA. Free gas, free food, free housing, free clothes -- we NEED them all. No go repeat ten times on your knees your prayer: "Oh big Daddy Government gift us today Our Daily Needs!"
Then you shouldn't have any problem providing a source for that claim, right?
Also, you continue to move the bar. The original argument on this thread says it's a simple matter of supply and demand. you've introducd a new factor - price manipulation.
Exactly.
ndustry Concentration
The concentration of firms in an industry is of interest to economists, business strategists, and government agencies. Here, we discuss two commonly-used methods of measuring industry concentration: the Concentration Ratio and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.
Concentration Ratio (CR)
The concentration ratio is the percentage of market share owned by the largest m firms in an industry, where m is a specified number of firms, often 4, but sometimes a larger or smaller number. The concentration ratio often is expressed as CRm, for example, CR4.
The concentration ratio can be expressed as:
CRm = s1 + s2 + s3 + ... ... + sm
where si = market share of the ith firm.
If the CR4 were close to zero, this value would indicate an extremely competitive industry since the four largest firms would not have any significant market share.
In general, if the CR4 measure is less than about 40 (indicating that the four largest firms own less than 40% of the market), then the industry is considered to be very competitive, with a number of other firms competing, but none owning a very large chunk of the market. On the other extreme, if the CR1 measure is more than about 90, that one firm that controls more than 90% of the market is effectively a monopoly.
While useful, the concentration ratio presents an incomplete picture of the concentration of firms in an industy because by definition it does not use the market shares of all the firms in the industry. It also does not provide information about the distribution of firm size. For example, if there were a significant change in the market shares among the firms included in the ratio, the value of the concentration ratio would not change.
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI)
The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index provides a more complete picture of industry concentration than does the concentration ratio. The HHI uses the market shares of all the firms in the industry, and these market shares are squared in the calculation to place more weight on the larger firms. If there are n firms in the industry, the HHI can be expressed as:
HHI = s12 + s22 + s32 + ... ... + sn2
where si is the market share of the ith firm.
Unlike the concentration ratio, the HHI will change if there is a shift in market share among the larger firms.
The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index is calculated by taking the sum of the squares of the market shares of every firm in the industry. For example, if there were only one firm in the industry, that firm would have 100% market share and the HHI would be equal to 10,000 -- the maximum possible value of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. On the other extreme, if there were a very large number of firms competing, each of which having nearly zero market share, then the HHI would be close to zero, indicating nearly perfect competition.
The U.S. Department of Justice uses the HHI in guidelines for evaluating mergers. An HHI of less than 1000 represents a relatively unconcentrated market, and the DOJ likely would not challenge a merger that would leave the industry with an HHI in that range. An HHI between 1000 and 1800 represents a moderately concentrated market, and the DOJ likely would closely evaluate the competitive impact of a merger that would result in an HHI in that range. Markets having an HHI greater than 1800 are considered to be highly concentrated; there would be serious anti-trust concerns over a proposed transaction that would increase the HHI by more than 100 or 200 points in a highly concentrated market.
Right. They should all keep their prices secret. No signs of prices. You don't know what you've paid until some random future date when the bill comes. Right! LOL!
That way, without publicly posted prices -- ROTFLOL -- they do not collude.
Why the solution is simple. NO BUSINESS SHOULD EVER BE ALLOWED TO ADVERTISE ITS PRICE!
Late '70s, man. Because the gas stations didn't make money facing a shortage anyway, *they* couldn't buy gas after they were out w/those "reasonable" price controls. Hence, there was NO gas and long waiting lines.
So your tears about high prices are all MOOT when there is nothing to buy, anyway.
Subject: Oil Shortages
This Should Help Explain It All...
A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Well, there's a very simple answer.
Nobody bothered to check the oil.
We just didn't know we were getting low.
The reason for that is purely geographical. Our OIL is located in:
Alaska
California
Coastal Florida
Coastal Louisiana
Kansas
Michigan
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
and Texas
Our DIPSTICKS are located in Washington D.C.
Any Questions?
Sounds reasonable. I'm not a conspiracy theorist myself, but I do know that there are lots of things that at one time were thought to be conspiracies were later found to be fact, fwiw. Agent Orange, for example was thought to be made up at one time.
it has been a while since I studied the hhi. that data set will make the hhi come out ok.
those figures include refiners and their retail outlets. the drillers are even more price taker and flat. remember venz, russia, saudi etc.
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