Concentration and Profits in South Africa: Monopoly or Efficiency?

Measuring excessive pricing as an abuse of dominance – an assessment of the criteria used in the Harmony Gold/Mittal Steel complaint

“…This is the case in the SA steel industry. Mittal is the dominant player in the flat steel market (of which hot rolled coil is a main product), producing around 80 per cent of flat steel in the local market (the flat steel industry's local sales in 2007 amounted to 2.8 million tonnes) 5 . Highveld Steel, as the only other local producer, accounts for the remainder, aside from small volumes of imports, and it also focuses on a particular product range.…”

Concentration, Labour Quality and Wages in the South Concentration, Labour African Manufacturing Sector

“…The index will be zero in a perfectly competitive industry where price equals marginal cost. L-profit thus is an indicator of pricing conduct and is frequently used in studies investigating industrial behaviour (Reekie 1984;Leach 1992;Fourie and Smith 1993). Given the format of the IDC data, L-profit was calculated as gross operating surplus divided by total production, where gross operating surplus = (net output -wages) and net output = value added.…”

The South African Cement Cartel: An Economic Evaluation

“…Consequently, L-profit is a useful indicator of pricing conduct, which explains its frequent use (e.g. Reekie 1984, Leach 1992and Fourie and Smith 1993. L-profit is normally calculated as (net output -wages)/gross output.…”