In the Times today, Philip Collins, was talking about Labour’s concerns about concentrations of market power. Collins’s wider argument is that Ed Miliband sees himself as a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt, breaking up monopolistic powers wherever he sees them.
“ wants to redraw the shape of the market. It is likely that, in your household, you have spoken of little else lately than the Herfindahl Hirschman Index for testing the concentration of market power. The two H’s are set to be big stars if Mr Miliband becomes prime minister because any market that falls foul of their arithmetic could be wrestled back towards public interest.”
At Policy Exchange we talk of little else than Orris C. Herfindahl and Albert O. Hirschman. The focus is mainly why anyone would call their child Orris (in fact, I had to look up the index on Wikipedia). Co-incidentally Orris and his conventionally-named friend were mentioned at an excellent conference I attended yesterday, organised by Cornwall Energy. The conference looked at whether Labour’s proposed price freeze was a good idea (in short, they did not think so – the same as us). You can get hold of the excellent full Cornwall Energy report here…
Read the full blog on Policy Exchange’s Greener, Cheaper blog