Noodle price fixing reported in China

by Nick Vagnoni (Subscribe to Nick Vagnoni's posts)
Posted Mar 4th 2006 2:33PM
Filed under: Restaurants, Business, Asia, Newspapers

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Today's New York Times features a story about the sudden rises in noodle prices in the city of Lanzhou, China. Apparently noodle shops all over the city raised the prices of their bowls of noodles, prompting public outrage and investigations that eventually lead to allegations of price fixing among a few shop owners. According to the NYT, a local paper also reported that the shop owners involved threatened other noodle makers into compliance with the price jumps. Most of the noodle shops in the city seem to be complying with the several-cent hike, which, in the impoverished region, is a significant one.

[Photo: Du Bin, NYT]

Tags: china, lanzhou, noodle prices, price fixing

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3-05-2006 @ 11:04AM

Charmander Jones said...

The article says, "A large bowl, once only 27 cents, would now cost almost 31 cents."

Who set the original price to 27 cents?

For example, in a healthy market, some bowls would have started at 26 cents, some 27 cents, and some others 28 cents.

It sounds like the Lanzhou noodle market had some price-fixing to begin with. The article notes that Lanzhou has a "city price bureau". I wonder if the government bureaucrats are involved?

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