In: Economics
Explain why the Herfindehl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is superior to the concentration ratio?
The degree at which total production is made in the market by a
small number of firms is called Concentration.
1. Herfindahl-Hirschman Index is the most common measure to
calculate market concentration.
We can calculate it by adding the square root of the percentage
market share of each firm in the industry.
2. Traditional measure for industry concentration was concentration
ratio in which the market share of some companies of an industry is
simply added.
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index became the standard measure of
industrial concentration in 1982. It is calculated by adding a
squared market share of all the firms of the industry.
ThisIndex has some benefits over concentration ratio-
i). Information regarding the relative size of all the members of
an industry, not only some arbitrary subset of leading companies is
used by this index.
ii). The market share of the largest enterprises is weighted more
heavily.