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Getting started

Source: vignettes/concstats-start.Rmd
concstats-start.Rmd

What is concstats?

concstats is a small package that helps you to calculate the structure, concentration or diversity measures of a given market.
You can reach that goal in different ways:
a) calculating an individual measure, e.g. the Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI) or its dual.
b) calculating a group of measures, e.g. structural measures, or
c) a set of pre-selected measures in a one-step procedure.

How can you install it?

You can install concstats directly from CRAN

install.packages("concstats") # Market Structure, Concentration, and Inequality
                              # Measures
library(concstats)

You can install the development versions from

r-universe
install.packages(“concstats”, repos = “https://ropensci.r-universe.dev”)

github (requires remotes or devtools)
remotes::install_github(“ropensci/concstats”

Why did I build it?

Measures of concentration and competition are important and give a first insight of a given market structure in a particular market.
They are important to determine public policies and strategic corporate decisions. However, in research and in practice the most commonly used measure is the Herfindahl Hirschman Index. The concstats package offers a set of alternative measures.

concstats allows you to calculate quickly a particular measure or a group of measures to give you a better overview of a given market situation and therefore reducing uncertainty. It can be used by practitioners and academics alike.

How can it be used?

concstats should be used by practitioners and academics who are concerned about structure, concentration, diversity or inequality in general or on a regular basis. A single standard measure like the Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI) may lead to erroneous conclusions. The concstats package offers a straightforward way to calculate standard and alternative measures given a data set of market participants and their participation (in relative values) in a particular market at a given point of time or over time. concstats provides currently the following basic functions:

  • concstats_concstats() calculates eight pre-selected measures in a one-step procedure to provide a first insight of the market. The resulting data frame contains eight measures, which are: number of firms with market share, numbers equivalent, the cumulative share of the top (top 3 and top 5) firm(s) in percentage, the hhi index, the entropy index, and the palma ratio.
  • concstats_mstruct() is a wrapper for the following measures: firm, nrs_eq (Numbers equivalent), top, top 3 and top 5 market share, and all calculates all measures as a group. Each of the measures within a group can be accessed directly using the prefix concstats_, e.g. concstats_firm. In practice, firm ranking might be of interest, and the user might prefer the concstats_top_df functions. In general, the user should provide individual markets shares, however, the helper function concstats_shares can be used.
  • concstats_comp() is a group wrapper for the following concentration measures: hhi, the dual of the hhi, the min. of the hhi, the dominance index, the stenbacka index, and finally all which calculates all measures as a group.
  • concstats_inequ() is a wrapper for inequality and diversity measures and contains: entropy, gini coefficient, simpson index, the palma ratio and the alternative grs measure, all calculates the group measures.