interfirm rivalry in a repeated game an empirical test of tacit collusion rivalry in the vancouver retail gasoline market is modeled as a repeated game service station demand cost and intertemporal reaction functions are estimated from daily data on individual station prices costs and sales these functions are then used to calculate noncooperative and cooperative solutions to the constitutent game and the actual outcome of the repeated game the actual outcome is found to be substantially less lucrative than the monopoly solution nevertheless all stations are better off than if they played their noncooperative strategies in every period copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

privatization public offerings and political objectives this paper empirically analyses the political and economic objectives underlying privatization on the stock market particularly the factors of sips underpricing are explained and the study analyses whether the change of political parties in government play a role on the issue the paper has two main findings first larger initial returns occurred in the early stages of privatization second the change of government from left wing to right wing did not lead to significantly higher levels of underpricing the results show that governments are quite pragmatic with respect to underpricing maximizing proceeds from sips shows to be more important than ideological differences between parties in government

price discrimination and retail configuration the hypothesis that price discrimination based on willingness to pay for quality can occur in multifirm markets is confirmed using microdata on gasoline retailing a test that discriminates between price structures associated with discrimination and with cost driven competitive differentials is developed and implemented with controls for variation in outlet and market characteristics a second test based on profitability variation rejects a competitive peak load pricing explanation for the observed price dispersion the data suggest that price discrimination at the retail level adds at least 9 a gallon to the average price of full service gasoline

the social economic and environmental implications of biomass ethanol production in china a multi regional input output based hybrid lca model abstract as an alternative to conventional liquid fuels bioethanol holds the promise of transitioning to a clean and low carbon energy future china s bioethanol industry is at its nascent stage in this study we developed a hybrid life cycle assessment model that integrates the multi regional input output mrio approach and specific production data to evaluate the social economic and environmental i e the triple bottom line tbl impacts of the bioethanol sector in china s economic systems the mrio model was constructed using the 2012 mrio table and the data for the typical technologies of bioethanol production were leveraged to be specific we evaluated employment creation economic stimulus and energy use of bioethanol production in 28 scenarios in henan province the results show that compared to petroleum refining bioethanol production is more effective for economic stimulus and energy saving but less effective at job creation the impact of bioethanol production varies by technologies for every 1 million yuan of bioethanol production in china economic system first generation technology offers a projected 1 92 million yuan in economic growth and job creation of 2 06 full time equivalent while the second generation technology offers a lower energy consumption 1 19 tj in most scenarios the upstream sectors account for more than half of the tbl impacts of biofuel production this study helps to quantify the tbl impacts associated with the gasoline to bioethanol transition in china envisions the green opportunities for impact mitigation and sheds light on the potential direction for robust planning and policy making to advance the bioethanol industry s development

do negative and positive equity returns share the same volatility dynamics abstract this paper investigates whether positive and negative returns share the same dynamic volatility process the well established stylized facts on volatility persistence and asymmetric effects are re examined in light of such dichotomy to analyze the dynamics of down and up volatilities estimated from daily returns i use a bivariate generalization of the standard egarch model as a robustness check i also investigate various specifications of down and up realized measures estimated from high frequency data the empirical findings point to the existence of a marked diversity in the volatilities of positive and negative daily returns in terms of persistence and sensitivity to good and bad news a simple forecasting exercise highlights the striking performance of the proposed approach even during the crisis period

gasoline demand revisited an international meta analysis of elasticities meta analysis is used to determine if there are factors that systematically affect price and income elasticity estimates in studies of gasoline demand four econometric models are estimated using long run and short run price and income elasticity estimates from previous studies as the dependent variables explanatory variables include functional form lag structure time span national setting estimation technique and other features of the model structure elasticity estimates are found to be sensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of some measure of vehicle ownership static models appear to overestimate short run elasticities underestimate long run price elasticities but pick up the full long run income responsiveness there is variation in the elasticity of demand across countries especially in the short run and gasoline demand appears to be getting more price elastic and less income elastic over time

selling costs and switching costs explaining retail gasoline margins recent theoretical work has shown that price discrimination can take place in imperfectly competitive as well as monopoly markets the persistence of higher retail margins on unleaded than on leaded gasoline during the 1980s suggests that discrimination may occur even in very competitive markets this article studies a number of cost based explanations for such gasoline pricing as well as the possibility of price discrimination the analysis indicates that gas stations discriminate against groups of customers who are less likely to switch to another station the conclusions highlight the influence of shopping or search costs on pricing decisions even in markets thought to be quite competitive

estimates from a consumer demand system implications for the incidence of environmental taxes abstract most studies suggest that environmental taxes are regressive making them less attractive policy options we consider the distributional effects of a gasoline tax increase using four incidence measures and under three scenarios for gas tax revenue use to incorporate behavioral responses we use consumer expenditure survey data to estimate a consumer demand system that includes gasoline other goods and leisure our estimates confirm that when revenues are not recycled a gasoline tax is regressive use of incidence measures that ignore demand responses however will substantially overstate this regressivity in contrast the differences between the equivalent variation and easier to implement consumer surplus measures are relatively small in addition our results suggest that using the additional gas tax revenue to fund labor tax cuts makes the policy substantially less regressive while using the revenue to fund lump sum transfers actually makes it progressive

dynamic pricing in retail gasoline markets supergame models of tacit collusion show that supportable price cost margins increase with expected future collusive profits ceteris paribus as a result collusive margins will be larger when demand is expected to increase or marginal costs are expected to decline using panel data on sales volume and gasoline prices in 43 cities over 72 months we find behavior consistent with tacit collusion in retail gasoline markets controlling for current demand and cost current margins increase with expected next month demand and decrease with expected next month cost the results are not consistent with intertemporal l inkages due to inventory behavior or customer loyalty

aggregate impacts of the proposed reduction in the motor fuels excise tax in the united states this paper assesses the effects of the proposed reduction in the excise tax on gasoline and diesel fuel on the us economy the analytical approach used in the analysis consists of a computable general equilibrium model composed of 14 producing sectors 14 consuming sectors six household categories classified by income and a government the effects of a 4 3 cents gallon reduction in the excise tax on gasoline and diesel fuel on prices and quantities are examined the results suggest for example a decrease in the tax would result in higher output by the producing sectors by approximately 2 86 billion an expansion in the consumption of goods and services by approximately 3 48 billion and an increase in welfare by approximately 3 59 billion the government would realize a decrease in revenue of approximately 2 37 billion when subjected to a sensitivity analysis the results are reasonably robust with regard to the assumption of the values of the substitution elasticities

simulating the impact of new industries on the economy the case of biorefining in australia abstract we investigate the economic and employment consequences of introducing a new sugarcane based biofuel industry into australia we model the new biofuel industry on the production recipe of the existing large scale gasoalcohol and alcohol sectors in the brazilian economy to this end we utilise a hybrid io lca input output life cycle assessment approach which involves inserting data on new processes and or sectors into an existing io table in particular we develop and test an analytical and a numerical approach for re balancing an io table augmented with rows and columns representing large new biofuel industries we quantify changes in economic output and employment in the australian economy we conclude that a future biofuel industry will be employment positive for australia

collusive conduct in duopolies multimarket contact and cross ownership in the mobile telephone industry the deregulation of the telecommunications industry has resulted in a variety of industry structures which have been created in hopes of increasing competition one example is the licensing of cellular telephone services in the united states where the fcc created duopolies in which two firms were granted licenses to compete in strictly defined product and geographic markets taking advantage of the unique regulatory environment we test to what degree duopolistic competition leads to competitive market outcomes we find that cross ownership and multimarket contact are important factors in explaining non competitive prices

source of income effects for demand decisions and taxable consumption the relationship between sources of income and demand decisions by the household is examined here with an eye toward the ramifications on consumption tax bases income sources may be important when households attach psychic and transaction costs to individual purchases or when sources are assigned via a mental accounting process in either case general and specific sales tax bases may be affected by changes in income composition empirical results indicate two important findings first tax exemptions can introduce significant income source effects for a general consumption tax base second the importance of differential tax rates for gasoline and food at home strongly depends on the mix of labour capital retirement and non retirement transfer pay

incidence of federal and state gasoline taxes the federal specific gasoline tax falls equally on consumers and wholesalers whereas state specific taxes fall almost entirely on consumers the consumer incidence of state taxes is greater in states that use relatively little gasoline

analysing gasoline demand elasticities a survey this paper is a survey of studies on gasoline demand although there are very many dxerent studies in this eld which sometimes appear to arrive at contradictory results we find that with proper stratification of studies by model and data type much of the contict turns to consensus in this survey we classtfy studies by data type and by ten d erent categories of model and with the exception of estimates on seasonal data which tend to be unstable and of certain inappropriate model formulations we find a fair degree of agreement concerning average short run and even long run income and price elasticities

biomass direct fired power generation system in china an integrated energy ghg emissions and economic evaluation for salix abstract to gain a better understanding of the options of biomass power generation in china this study presented an integrated energy environmental and economic evaluation for salix in china and a typical salix direct fired power generation system sdpgs in inner mongolia was selected for case study a tiered hybrid life cycle assessment lca model was developed to calculate the planting to wire ptw energy consumption greenhouse gas ghg emissions and economic cost and profit of the sdpgs including feedstock cultivation power plant construction and operation and on grid price with without government subsidies the results show that the ptw energy consumption and ghg emissions of salix are 0 8 mj kwh and 114 g co2 eq kwh respectively indicating an energy payback time epbt of 3 2 years the sdpgs is not economically feasible without government subsidies the ptw costs are dominated by feedstock cultivation the energy saving and ghg mitigation benefits are still robust even when the power plant runs at only 60 design capacity for future development of biomass power in china scientific planning is necessary to guarantee a sufficient feedstock supply in addition technology progress mature industrial chains and reasonable price setting policy are required to enable potential energy and environmental advantages of biomass power moving forward

conjectures firm characteristics and market structure abstract this paper makes use of a unique data set to investigate how firms in the vancouver british columbia retail gasoline market view their rivals and how consumers in turn view these firms own and rival price elasticities of demand conjectural variations and lerner indices are estimated for thirteen service stations in a submarket of vancouver these variables are then related to firm characteristics such as type of ownership degree of horizontal and vertical integration and type of service in this way systematic patterns in seller behavior and in buyer attitudes are revealed

vancouver s gasoline price wars an empirical exercise in uncovering supergame strategies this paper uses a unique data set to determine which dynamic model of tacit collusion best describes behaviour in a particular industry the area investigated is a region of the vancouver british columbia retail gasoline market players are service station managers who compete daily firms choose price in each period using strategies that depend on prices chosen in the previous period periodically unanticipated demand shocks precipitate price wars when shocks occur the firms in the market must determine the new demand conditions and adjust their strategies from an econometric point of view slopes of intertemporal reaction functions are latent variables the resulting system of equations with time varying parameters is estimated via the kalman filter different repeated game oligopoly models correspond to different transition matrices for the latent variables the models can thus be assessed in terms of their power to explain firm behaviour in this market

vertical externalities in tax setting evidence from gasoline and cigarettes abstract a common feature of federal systems is that tax bases are joint property consequently state and federal tax setting decisions are interdependent our aim here is to put forward a rudimentary theoretical analysis of this phenomenon and to use the theory as a framework for econometrically estimating the magnitude of the responses we find that when the federal government increases taxes there is a significant positive response of state taxes for example a 10 cent per gallon increase in the federal tax rate on gasoline leads to a 3 2 cent increase in the state tax rate

regional finance and competition policy the canary islands petrol market market competition levels affect all agents of an economy businesses consumers and the state traditional analysis has evaluated the state s effects on the other agents but no analysis has been conducted regarding the inverse relationship thus the aim of this study is to estimate the tributary income losses that low levels of competition in the retail petrol market could cause in it using the data from canary islands autonomous community first we will use parker and roller s methodology 1997 to measure the level of competition and confirm a deficiency then using estimated rates we will determine the differences that would appear in tributary income if the market were to behave as a cournot s model our results show that the lack of competition causes a substantial loss of tributary income for this region somewhere between 5and 10 of the real income from the tax on unleaded petrol for the year 2004