More On Common Sense

Statistics are accepted so uncritically by people with no real intention of being dishonest. It's much more difficult to debunk a lie when it has no liars in its origins.

Here's a for instance. The Hotel and Catering Industry Training Board once asked one of their staff to perform a study into recruitment and staffing. He duly conducted a load of surveys and discovered, perhaps interestingly, that a large number of graduates were working as hotel porters. This, of course, was mainly because they were going on to do post-graduate academic work and were earning a bit of easy money over Summer or during a gap year or while studying. But the thing is, that last sentence is the result of common sense, not statistical analysis; it is the result of criticising, not accepting, a perfectly true statistic that makes too little sense. The HCITB employee in question didn't do this; he simply stuck all his data through his stats rules and presented his conclusions to the board, recommending, among other things, a vigorous graduate recruitment program to meet the industry's needs for hotel porters over the coming years. For this, he was rightly fired. True story.

A lot more damage is done to the reputation of the discipline of statistics by this common failure to factor in the thought that what you're measuring is usually too messy to be measured in the way you'd like.

Source: http://www.squandertwo.net/blog/2007/09/
lies-damn-lies-and-bloody-idiots.htm




Competition Law and Policy

Market Structure and barriers to entry

• Absolute advantages
• Strategic advantages

– Exclusionary behaviour.
– Efficiency v Artificial barriers.
– Legal and regulatory barriers
– Intellectual property rights:
– Superior Technology and ‘first move advantage




• The geographical market

‘A relevant geographic market comprises the area in which the undertakings concerned are involved in the supply or demand of product and services, in which the conditions of competition are sufficiently homogeneous and which can be distinguished from neighbouring areas because the conditions of competition are appreciably different in those areas.’ (Notice on market definition)





• The product market

‘A relevant product market comprises all those products and/or services which are regarded as interchangeable or substitutable by the consumer, by reason of the products’ characteristics, their prices and their intended use’
(Notice on market definition)

Source: FHS: Competition Law and Policy
Introduction to Competition Law and Policy & Antitrust Economics