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Book Price Response Asymmetry and Spatial Differentiation in Local Retail Gasoline Markets

Download or read book Price Response Asymmetry and Spatial Differentiation in Local Retail Gasoline Markets written by Jeremy A. Verlinda and published by BiblioGov. This book was released on 2013-06 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the possibility that local market power influences the observed asymmetric relationship between changes in wholesale gasoline costs and changes in retail gasoline prices. I exploit an original data set of weekly gas station prices in Southern California from September 2002 to May 2003, and take advantage of detailed station and local market level characteristics to determine the extent to which spatial differentiation influences price response asymmetry. I find that brand identity, proximity to rival stations, bundling and advertising, operation type, and local market features and demographics each influence a station's predicted price-response asymmetry.

Book Price response Asymmetry and Spatial Differetntiation in Local Retail Gasoline Markets

Download or read book Price response Asymmetry and Spatial Differetntiation in Local Retail Gasoline Markets written by Jeremy A. Verlinda and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Perfect Competition  Spatial Competition  and Tax Incidence in the Retail Gasoline Market

Download or read book Perfect Competition Spatial Competition and Tax Incidence in the Retail Gasoline Market written by James Alm and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper we use monthly gasoline price data for all fifty U.S. states over the period 1984 to 1999 to examine the incidence of state gasoline excise taxes. Standard economic theory predicts full shifting of the excise tax to consumers when the supply of gasoline is perfectly elastic, and our empirical results are largely consistent with this prediction. In general, we find full shifting of gasoline taxes to the final consumer, with changes in gasoline taxes fully reflected in the tax-inclusive gasoline price almost instantly, a result consistent with a retail gasoline market in which firms are perfectly competitive and produce at constant cost. In addition, although we find that gasoline retail prices demonstrate asymmetric responses to changes in gasoline wholesale prices, we find only limited evidence of such behavior for retail prices with respect to gasoline excise taxes. Importantly, we also present a novel application of a spatial price discrimination model to examine tax incidence in markets that are not perfectly competitive. In this alternative framework, the incidence of excise taxes depends upon the competitiveness of retail gasoline markets, which depends in turn on spatial aspects of the market. Consistent with this alternative theoretical framework, our empirical estimates demonstrate that gasoline markets in urban states exhibit full shifting, but those in rural states demonstrate somewhat less than full shifting.

Book Asymmetries in Retail Gasoline Price Dynamics and Local Market Power

Download or read book Asymmetries in Retail Gasoline Price Dynamics and Local Market Power written by George Deltas and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using monthly data from the 48 contiguous states (except Nevada) for the 1988-2002 period, it is shown that retail gasoline prices respond faster to wholesale price increases than to equivalent wholesale price decreases. Moreover, markets with high average retail-wholesale margins experience a slower adjustment and a higher degree of asymmetry. These results are robust to whether or not an error correction term is used, and to a number of other specifications. Since gasoline is the only variable input, one could reasonably assume that average margins in a state reflect the degree of market power at the retail level. This suggests that sticky prices and response asymmetries in the gasoline market are, at least partially, a consequence of retail market power, raising the possibility that slow price adjustments and asymmetric price responses could be used as an indicator of potential departure from perfect competition. It is also shown that out-of-sample forecasts based on asymmetric models yield substantially better predictions for the path of retail prices than forecasts based on the symmetric models. This result is robust to different measures of forecast accuracy. The higher accuracy of the out-of-sample forecasts based on asymmetric models indicates that these asymmetries are not just an outcome of fitting to a particular sample but represent the underlying data generating process.

Book Do Rockets Rise Faster and Feathers Fall Slower in an Atmosphere of Local Market Power  Evidence from the Retail Gasoline Market

Download or read book Do Rockets Rise Faster and Feathers Fall Slower in an Atmosphere of Local Market Power Evidence from the Retail Gasoline Market written by Jeremy A. Verlinda and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the possibility that local market power influences the observed asymmetric relationship between changes in wholesale gasoline costs and changes in retail gasoline prices. I exploit an original data set of weekly gas station prices in Southern California from September 2002 to May 2003, and take advantage of detailed station and local market level characteristics to determine the extent to which geographic and product differentiation influences price response asymmetry. I find that brand identity, proximity to rival stations, and local market features and demographics each influence a station's predicted price-response asymmetry. Web Appendix available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1000964.

Book Product Differentiation  Competition and Prices in the Retail Gasoline Industry

Download or read book Product Differentiation Competition and Prices in the Retail Gasoline Industry written by Mark David Manuszak and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis presents a series of studies of the retail gasoline industry using data from Hawaii. This first chapter examines a number of pricing patterns in the data and finds evidence that gasoline stations set prices which are consistent with a number of forms of price discrimination. The second chapter analyzes various patterns of cross-sectional, cross-market and intertemporal variation in the data to investigate their suitability for use in structural econometric estimation. The remainder of the dissertation consists of specification and estimation of a structural model of supply and demand for retail gasoline products sold at individual gasoline stations. This detailed micro-level analysis permits examination of a number of important issues in the industry, most notably the importance of spatial differentiation in the industry. The third chapter estimates the model and computes new equilibria under a number of asymmetric taxation regimes in order to examine the impact of such tax policies on producer and consumer welfare as well as tax revenue. The fourth chapter examines whether there is any evidence of tacitly collusive behavior in the Hawaiian retail gasoline industry and concludes that, in fact, conduct is fairly competitive in this industry and market.

Book Spatial Differentiation and Vertical Contracts in Retail Markets for Gasoline

Download or read book Spatial Differentiation and Vertical Contracts in Retail Markets for Gasoline written by Jean-Francois Houde and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper studies an empirical model of spatial competition and evaluates the impact of vertical relations on prices and consumer welfare. The main feature of my approach is to specify commuting paths as the "locations" of consumers in a Hotelling-style model. As a result spatial differentation depends in an intuitive way on the structure of the road network and the direction of traffic flows. The model is estimated using panel data on the Québec City gasoline market, and used to quantify markups and simulate two important counter-factual policies: elimination of vertical integration, and wholesale price discrimination ban.

Book Retail Gasoline Price Dynamics and Local Market Power

Download or read book Retail Gasoline Price Dynamics and Local Market Power written by George Deltas and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using monthly data from the 48 contiguous states (except Nevada) for the 1988-2002 period, it is shown that retail gasoline prices respond faster to wholesale price increases than to equivalent wholesale price decreases. Moreover, markets with high average retail-wholesale margins experience a slower adjustment and a more asymmetric response. Since gasoline is the only variable input, average margins in a state likely reflect the degree of retail market power. This suggests that sticky prices and response asymmetries in the gasoline market are, at least partially, a consequence of retail market power.

Book Asymmetric Dynamic Pricing in a Local Gasoline Retail Market

Download or read book Asymmetric Dynamic Pricing in a Local Gasoline Retail Market written by Felipe Balmaceda and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asymmetric-price adjustment is a common phenomenon in many markets around the world, particularly in retail gasoline markets. This paper studies the existence of this phenomenon in the retail gasoline market in the city of Santiago, Chile, using a data set of weekly gas station prices that covers a period of almost four years. We found that prices adjust asymmetrically, and the asymmetry is different for branded gas stations and unbranded stations. In addition, we found that the asymmetry for high-margin stations is statistically equivalent to that for low-margin stations. This evidence is suggestive of collusion as a rationale for the asymmetric pricing policy observed.

Book Asymmetric Pass Through in U S  Gasoline Prices

Download or read book Asymmetric Pass Through in U S Gasoline Prices written by Federal Trade Commission and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents new evidence of asymmetric pass-through, the notion that upward cost shocks are passed through faster than downward cost shocks, in U.S. gasoline prices. Much of the extant literature comes to seemingly contradictory conclusions about the existence of an asymmetry, though the differences may be due to different aggregation (both over time and geographic markets) and the use of different price series including crude oil, wholesale, and retail gasoline prices. I utilize a large and detailed dataset to determine where evidence of a pass-through asymmetry exists, and how it depends on the aggregation and price series chosen by the researcher. Using the standard error correction model, I find evidence of pass-through asymmetry in the response of daily and weekly retail prices to wholesale rack price changes, though the magnitude varies by geographic market. On average, retail prices rise more than four times as fast as they fall. Branded gasoline features significantly more asymmetry with respect to rack prices compared with unbranded gasoline. Over time, nation-wide asymmetry varies significantly from year to year peaking in 2005. Midwest cities, like Louisville and Minneapolis, feature more asymmetry compared with other parts of the country. F-tests broadly confirm the results and illustrate that data selection and aggregation, as well as model specification, can have important implications on the findings of asymmetric pass-through.

Book Price Changes in the Gasoline Market

Download or read book Price Changes in the Gasoline Market written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report examines a recurring question about gasoline markets: why, especially in times of high price volatility, do retail gasoline prices seem to rise quickly but fall back more slowly? Do gasoline prices actually rise faster than they fall, or does this just appear to be the case because people tend to pay more attention to prices when they`re rising? This question is more complex than it might appear to be initially, and it has been addressed by numerous analysts in government, academia and industry. The question is very important, because perceived problems with retail gasoline pricing have been used in arguments for government regulation of prices. The phenomenon of prices at different market levels tending to move differently relative to each other depending on direction is known as price asymmetry. This report summarizes the previous work on gasoline price asymmetry and provides a method for testing for asymmetry in a wide variety of situations. The major finding of this paper is that there is some amount of asymmetry and pattern asymmetry, especially at the retail level, in the Midwestern states that are the focus of the analysis. Nevertheless, both the amount asymmetry and pattern asymmetry are relatively small. In addition, much of the pattern asymmetry detected in this and previous studies could be a statistical artifact caused by the time lags between price changes at different points in the gasoline distribution system. In other words, retail gasoline prices do sometimes rise faster than they fall, but this is largely a lagged market response to an upward shock in the underlying wholesale gasoline or crude oil prices, followed by a return toward the previous baseline. After consistent time lags are factored out, most apparent asymmetry disappears.

Book Price Pass through in U S  Gasoline Markets

Download or read book Price Pass through in U S Gasoline Markets written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The price pass-through relationship of retail gasoline markets in the United States has been examined on several levels. This dissertation takes two unique approaches to examine the pass-through behavior (1) a seemingly unrelated regressions model to survey regional differences in gasoline markets and (2) a pooled panel error-correction approach to analyze the effects of spatial competition on local Mississippi gasoline markets. The first model showed the presence of rockets and feathers on a regional level in the US. Moreover, every PADD had a long run asymmetric price pass-through relationship. I included variables to capture the effect of Hurricane Katrina. The inclusion of the Katrina variable indicated only the immediate period after the storm changed the pass-through behavior. Additionally, the market returned to the pre-Katrina pass-through relationship twelve weeks after the storm. The pooled panel model showed the presence of rockets and feathers in the state of Mississippi. It also indicated that the presence of spatial competition does have an effect on the price pass-through behavior. Moreover, the exact distance to the closest competitor did have a significant effect on the price pass-through relationship.

Book Essays on Information  Competition  and Pricing Dynamics in the Retail Gasoline Market

Download or read book Essays on Information Competition and Pricing Dynamics in the Retail Gasoline Market written by Woo-Hyung Hong and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies the role of information in market performance, and pricing dynamics observed in the retail gasoline market. In Chapter 1, we empirically test whether smartphones, as information-providing devices, can improve market performance and reduce price dispersion. We treat the introduction of smartphones in the Korean gasoline market as a natural experiment to investigate the impact of smartphones on competition among gas stations. Smartphones provided consumers with direct access to price information through OPINET, a government-sponsored Internet website. Our results indicate that the adoption of smartphones is associated with dramatic decreases in price dispersion and average price-cost margins, thereby creating consumer gains. Additionally, we found a sudden decline in entries and a slow increase in exits after the introduction of smartphones. Chapter 2 investigates how and why a link between market power and asymmetric pricing occurs. Exploiting unique island panel data from the Korean gasoline market, we propose geographical separation as a reliable measure of market power. Our findings confirm a positive correlation between market power and price-response asymmetry. We provide direct evidence of tacit collusion by investigating sticky pricing behaviors and suggest that the tacit collusion is the main channel through which market power influences asymmetric pricing. Additionally, we examine the effect of station heterogeneity on asymmetric pricing to provide further evidence of tacit collusion even in relatively competitive environments.

Book Centrality and Pricing in Spatially Differentiated Markets

Download or read book Centrality and Pricing in Spatially Differentiated Markets written by Matthias Firgo and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We highlight the importance of 'centrality' for pricing. Firms characterized by a more central position in a spatial network are more powerful in terms of having a stronger impact on their competitors' prices and on equilibrium prices. These propositions are derived froma simple theoretical model and investigated empirically for the retail gasoline market of Vienna, Austria.We compute a measure of network centrality based on the locations of gasoline stations in the road network. Results from a spatial autoregressive model show that prices of gasoline stations are more strongly correlated with prices of central competitors.

Book Spatial Pricing and Differentiated Markets

Download or read book Spatial Pricing and Differentiated Markets written by George Norman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1986 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: