Quote:
Originally Posted by Synamon
Energy companies have nearly identical cost structures, resulting in very similar marketing strategies.
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It’s got nothing to do with identical cost structures and everything to do with monopolistic cartels. As long as the players in the market maintain similar price structures and don’t deliberately spark price wars by cutting prices all the members of the monopolistic cartel win in steady profits. Once a price war starts, with one company trying to grab a bigger share of the market—they all lose as cost cutting starts and prices fall.
We know they’re price colluding, because there’s virtually no difference in prices across the board from different companies supplying the same commodity. Proving they’re actually price colluding would be virtually impossible.
Using your example of identical cost structures, one would expect Supermarkets to have identical prices on all their products—they don’t. They vary quite significantly depending on how they’re positioned in the market and the quality of their products and levels of service offered.
This is pretty basic economics to be honest.