Using data on prices, production, and exports, we are able to identify marginal costs as well as the effectiveness of the Norwegian cement industry cartel. We find that our marginal cost estimates are very much in line with the detailed cost accounting data. We show that the cement cartel has been ineffective because the sharing rule induces "overproduction" and exporting below marginal costs. It is consumers -- not firms -- who benefit from the sharing rule. The ineffectiveness of the cartel was becoming so large that domestic welfare of a merger to monopoly would be positive around 1968, which is when the merger actually took place! We also show that competition would have resulted in even higher welfare gains over the entire sample.
We examine Norwegian gasoline pump prices using daily station‐specific observations from 2003 to 2006. The four big gasoline companies use a vertical restraint that is adopted industry‐wide (labeled price support). This moves price control from the hands of independent retailers into the hands of the headquarters. Retail gasoline prices follow a fixed weekly pattern, where we observe de facto simultaneous decision‐making by the headquarters (without knowledge of their rivals’ prices) when every Monday around noon they decide to increase pump prices to the same level. The price level on Mondays corresponds to the recommended prices published by the headquarters of the gasoline companies.
This paper addresses the relationship between the cointegration approach to market delineation and the more traditional approach of analyzing the demand structure among different products in terms of degree of substitutability. Cointegration tests for market delineation and estimation of a dynamic system of demand equations are undertaken utilizing the same data set. The data set consists of three high-quality seafood products in the European Union. The results are encouraging as the results from the two approaches are not only compatible, but are also complementary in the sense that they provide more information together than they do separately. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.
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