Ontology: We should add the term price to oeo-social

[han-f]

Description of the issue

On markets, commodities are exchanged against money. Commodities trade at a price. We should introduce price to the oeo-social part.
A price is the amount of money exchanged during the trade of a commodity.

Ideas of solution

Price is an objective magnitude of numerical value. (However, the putative value of an exchanged commodity may not be equal to the attached price).

Work along "An ontology of economic objects", Gloria Zuniga (1999).
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5566/1/Ontology_of_Economic_Objects.pdf

Workflow checklist

• [ ] I discussed the issue with someone else than me before working on a solution
• [x] I already read the latest version of the workflow for this repository
• [x] I added this issue to the Project 'Issues'. If suitable, I add it to further Projects.
• [ ] The goal of this ontology is clear to me

I am aware that

• [ ] every new entry in the ontology should have an annotation
• [ ] classes should arise from concepts rather than from words

[han-f]

A first shot: can we make price connect to quantity value?
_A quantity value is a generically dependent continuant defined by a numeral together with a unit of measurement to quantify an entity._

For example something along these lines: _A price is a quantity value at which commodities are exchanged on markets._

(A price comes with numeral and unit of measurement (currency), e.g: 5 Euros)

[jannahastings]

FIBO (the financial industry ontology) defines price as "an amount of money, goods, or services requested, expected, required, or given in exchange for something else". They also note "A price is a quantity value. Furthermore, any price only has quantity kind that is a monetary measure. "

[0UmfHxcvx5J7JoaOhFSs5mncnisTJJ6q]

How to handle the quantity of the good? It is implicitly assumed to be unity (e.g. 30 cent for _one_ apple), but most energy goods are not countable (e.g. there is no _one_ electricity/natural gas/heat).

So in my view a "price" is comprised of six parts: _amount_, _unit_, and _type_ of numerator and denominator each. E.g. 27 cent of EUR (2020) over 1 kWh of electricity. The numerator _unit_ and _type_ may both end up inmoney` (#335) and the _amount_ of the denominator is assumed to be 1 (anybody ever seen a price that wasn't normalised? :thinking: ).

The denominator type should include material entities (individual artificial objects – like a generator – as well as object aggregates – like all the energy carriers like natural gas) at least. But it also needs to include electrical energy (so ← energy ← quality ← specifically dependent continuant ← continuant). Conceivably, at some point the cost of work would be included in the ontology. I have no idea where 'labour hour' would go, but to me that indicates not to limit the denominator to continuants.

[sfluegel05]

From oeo-dev-meeting 8.2:
Definition for price (taken from fibo, unchanged): _an amount of money, goods, or services requested, expected, required, or given in exchange for something else_
parent class: oeo:quantity value
fibo-equivalent: fibo-fnd-acc-cur:Price
MonetaryPrice may be more suited
There are also different relations associated with (monetary) price in fibo which may be of use.

amount could be represented as a numerical value and for unit we can use the already implemented class unit (see #533).

Definition for currency (taken from fibo, unchanged): _medium of exchange value, defined by reference to the geographical location of the monetary authorities responsible for it_
parent class: oeo:unit or bfo:immaterial entity
fibo-equivalent: fibo-fnd-acc-cur:Currency

[Vera-IER]

I think in the context of energy modelling, we just need the concept of monetary price. We could change the price definition to:
_A monetary price is a quantity value that describes the amount of money requested, expected, required or given in exchange for something else._
@sfluegel05 do you mean with the useful relations from FIBO has currency and has numerical value?

[sfluegel05]

@sfluegel05 do you mean with the useful relations from FIBO has currency and has numerical value?

I guess so. If monetary price is a subclass of quantity value (and propably also of economic value), the has numerical value-part should be covered. The has currency-part could be covered by a relation has unit some currency.

For currency we should use unit as a parent class since we already changed the definition of unit to fit currencies. An adjusted definition would be: _A unit which is a measure of the medium of an exchange value, defined by reference to the geographical location of the monetary authorities responsible for it._