> But thus implies that, contrary to the "competitive" model that Bina and
> others argue for, the oil market is still dependent upon OPEC's good
> will _not_ to destroy the competition in the interest in keeping
> consumers hooked.)
To be fair to Bina, I think this article, while very interesting and a good thing to keep in our common archive, bends the stick too far in the opposite direction. They are right that sometimes OPEC has lowered the price of oil on purpose. But they then seem to assume that *every* time the price has crashed, it's been done on purpose. I think that's clearly not true. The low prices that were a big part of the 90s economic boom were universally regarded as awful in the OPEC countries. Those years of bust are a big reason why Saudi Arabia's GDP per capita is today a third of what it was in in the mid-80s, and why it is today heavily indebted -- two outcomes it certainly didn't desire.
Michael