petrol prices oil price rises and oil price falls some evidence for the uk since 1972 this paper examines the relationship between retail petrol prices excise duties and crude oil prices in the uk over the period 1973 1988 the existence of a stable relationship between the petrol price level of excise duty and spot oil price is confirmed through use of the cointegration approach although the speed of reaction of petrol prices to changes in the crude price depends on whether crude prices are rising or falling any asymmetry in the pricing response is virtually absent after an adjustment period of only four months

the short and long run effects of tied foreign aid on pollution abatement pollution and employment a pilot model abstract there exists in the literature a presumption that tied foreign aid can be used effectively to reduce cross border pollution focusing in contrast to the received literature on the interaction between the public and private provisions of pollution abatement in the recipient country we question the effectiveness of tied foreign aid in reducing pollution in this context we obtain many novel and policy relevant insights allowing for changes in labour employment and distinguishing between short and long run effects tied foreign aid is shown to crowd out the private provision for pollution abatement in the short run in the long run tied foreign aid raises employment and therefore may be desirable for the recipient but undesirable for the donor country because it also raises pollution the results change drastically if only the government provides pollution abatement

causes for an asymmetric relation between the price of crude oil and refined petroleum products we revisit the issue of asymmetries in the relation between the price of crude oil and refined petroleum products in the united states an econometric analysis of monthly data indicates that the asymmetric relation between the price of crude oil and motor gasoline is generated by refinery utilization rates and inventory behavior the asymmetric relation between the price of crude oil and home heating oil probably is generated by contractual arrangements between retailers and consumers together these results imply that price asymmetries may be generated by efficient markets under these conditions there is little justification for policy interventions to reduce or eliminate price asymmetries in motor gasoline and home heating oil markets

testing for asymmetric pricing in the canadian retail gasoline market abstract this paper applies a threshold regression model to test for asymmetric pricing in the retail gasoline market in canada using weekly data for the period january 1990 to december 1996 we present results for 13 canadian cities for both premium and regular gasoline within the context of an error correction model we test for the presence of asymmetric price behaviour using average changes in crude prices as well as various lags for the change in crude as possible thresholds we are unable to find any evidence to support this view

a noncooperative analysis of hotelling s location game abstract we study the location equilibrium in hotelling s model of spatial competition as d aspremont et al have shown with quadratic consumer transportation cost the two sellers will seek to move as far away from each other as possible we show that the location game possesses an infinity of mixed strategy nash equilibria in these equilibria coordination failure invalidates the principle of maximum differentiation and firms may even locate at the same point journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d43 l11

the toxic intensity of industrial production global patterns trends and trade policy this paper exploits a newly developed data set to investigate recent changes in the international distribution of industrial pollution in particular the authors examine three issues 1 the relationship between the toxic intensity of industrial production and the level of economic development 2 the impact of oecd environmental regulation on global changes in toxic intensity and 3 the relationship between trade policy and the toxic intensity of industrial production in ldc s 10 refs

asymmetric error correction models for the oil gasoline price relationship abstract the existing literature on price asymmetries does not systematically investigate the sensitivity of the empirical results to the choice of a particular econometric specification this paper fills this gap by providing a detailed comparison of the three most popular models designed to describe asymmetric price behavior namely asymmetric ecm autoregressive threshold ecm and ecm with threshold cointegration each model is estimated on a common monthly data set for the gasoline markets of france germany italy spain and uk over the period 1985 2003 all models are able to capture the temporal delay in the reaction of retail prices to changes in spot gasoline and crude oil prices as well as some evidence of asymmetric behavior however the type of market and the number of countries which are characterized by asymmetric oil gasoline price relations vary across models the asymmetric ecm prescribes that long run price asymmetries are most likely to be found in the second stage of the transmission chain conversely the ecm with threshold cointegration suggests that long run price asymmetries vary across countries and markets short run price asymmetries are captured by the asymmetric ecm specification and the tar ecm the latter model suggests that all european countries are likely to be affected by asymmetries at the distribution stage while the results obtained with the asymmetric ecm are mixed

price matching policy and the principle of minimum differentiation this paper shows that if duopolists are allowed to choose their product locations a price matching policy and their prices sequentially and independently both tacit collusion and minimum differentiation occur copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

rockets and feathers the asymmetric speed of adjustment of uk retail gasoline prices to cost changes abstract the paper develops a quadratic quantity adjustment model to test the hypothesis put forward in the recent monopolies and mergers commission report that the speed of adjustment of uk retail gasoline prices to cost changes is more rapid when costs rise than when they fall and that the adjustment path is more concentrated around the mean value on the upswing using data from 1982 to 1989 evidence of faster and more concentrated responses to cost increases were found

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

international trade and the environment policy reform in a polluted small open economy abstract this paper investigates sufficient conditions for welfare improving policy reforms in a small open economy facing many trade and pollution distortions we investigate and compare reform in tax regimes quota regimes and mixed regimes where some pollutants are regulated with taxes and others with quotas it is also shown that the welfare benefits of reforming pollution policy are greater in an economy with international factor mobility than in an economy not subject to such mobility

retail price cycles and response asymmetry weekly retail gasoline prices in windsor ontario from 1989 to 1994 appear to respond faster to wholesale price increases than to decreases but exhibit a cyclic pattern inconsistent with a common explanation of response asymmetry i reconcile these observations through a model of price cycles prices on the downward portion of the cycle appear insensitive to costs compared with price increases supporting the theory that price decreases result from battles over market share this pattern resembles a faster response to cost increases than to decreases and the conclusion that asymmetry indicates a role for competition policy may be inappropriate jel classification l13 l71 cycles des prix de detail et reponse asymetrique les prix de detail hebdomadaires de la gazoline a windsor ont entre 1989 et 1994 semblent reagir plus vite aux accroissements qu aux chutes des prix de gros mais suivent un pattern cyclique qui ne semble pas consistant avec l explication traditionnelle en termes de reponse asymetrique l auteur reconcilie ces observations a l aide d un modele de cycle de prix les prix dans la portion descendante du cycle semblent insensibles aux variations de couts par comparaison avec les accroissements de prix ce qui supporte la theorie que les chutes de prix resultent de luttes pour les parts de marche le pattern ressemble a celui declenche par une reponse plus rapide aux augmentations qu aux chutes de couts et la conclusion qui voudrait qu on puisse attribuer le tout a l asymetrie des reponses et que donc une intervention de la politique de la concurrence s impose peut etre inappropriee

sticky prices inventories and market power in wholesale gasoline markets a model with costly adjustment of production and costly inventories implies that wholesale gasoline prices will respond with a lag to crude oil cost shocks unlike explanations that rely upon menu costs imperfect information or long term buyer seller relationships this model predicts that futures prices for gasoline will adjust incompletely to crude oil price shocks that occur close to the expiration date of the futures contract we test and confirm this implication examining wholesale price responses in 188 gasoline markets we also find that firms with market power adjust prices more slowly than do competitive firms consistent with the model

symmetric or asymmetric oil prices a meta analysis approach the analysis of price asymmetries in the gasoline market is one of the most widely studied in energy economics however the great variation in the outcomes reported makes the drawing of any definitive conclusions difficult given this situation a meta analysis serves as an excellent tool to discover which characteristics of the various markets analyzed and which specific features of these studies might account for these differences in adopting such an approach this paper shows how the particular segment of the industry analyzed the characteristics of the data the years under review the type of publication and the introduction of control variables might explain this heterogeneity in results the paper concludes on these grounds that increased competition may significantly reduce the possibility of occurrence of asymmetric behavior these results should be taken into consideration therefore in future studies of asymmetries in the oil industry

asymmetric equilibria in spatial competition abstract the main purpose of this paper is to study the impact of consumer concentration around the market center on the equilibrium locations of location price games in the case of symmetric triangular density it is shown that no symmetric equilibrium exists however we demonstrate the existence of asymmetric equilibria in pure strategies these equilibria are also characterized our secondary purpose is to study the sequential entry of two firms when the location space is not restricted to the market space this leads us to uncover a substantial first mover advantage which has been neglected in the literature

the competitive effects of price floors using hotelling s model of locational competition we show that a moderate price floor destroys the maximal differentiation equilibrium resulting in minimum differentiation equilibrium prices are lower than prices in the absence of a floor a low price floor can lead to multiple equilibria with both minimum and maximum differentiation as possible outcomes

price regulation and relative price convergence evidence from the retail gasoline market in canada this paper explores price regulation and relative price convergence in the canadian retail gasoline market we use monthly data 2000 2010 on retail gasoline prices in 60 canadian cities to investigate i whether the retail gasoline market in canada has experienced a relative price convergence to the mean which is expected given the increased economic integration across canadian provinces and ii whether the introduction of price regulation mechanisms in new brunswick and nova scotia in july 2006 had any impact on the price convergence in these provinces we use a nonlinear panel unit root test and find solid evidence that canadian retail gasoline markets are well integrated across locales however the share of converging cities reveals a significant decline since july of 2006 the impact of price regulation on price convergence is mixed our results indicate that since the enactment of the regulation in all new brunswick cities 9 included in the dataset gasoline prices converge to the national mean volatility of price is also significantly reduced in contrast in the wake of price regulation in nova scotia all 6 cities of the province are non convergent to the mean with increased volatility and overall price level

symmetric or asymmetric price adjustments in the oil market an empirical analysis of the relations between international and domestic prices in the federal republic of germany 1972 89 abstract this paper investigates how german consumer and wholesale prices for gasoline and light heating oil react to changes in the corresponding rotterdam prices monthly data from 1972 to 1989 are employed and the subperiods of the 1970s 1972 to 1979 and 1980s 1980 1989 are distinguished error correction models are estimated to seperate long run equilibrium relations and short run adjustment processes for the 1980s we find rapid symmetric and full adjustment of the german prices to the rotterdam prices whereas during the 1970s we find some asymmetries and at least for gasoline the adjustment processes took considerably more time

investigation of production sales and inventory relationships using multicointegration and non symmetric error correction models the accumulated sum of a stationary series is called integrated if a linear combination of some of the integrated series is stationary it is said to be cointegrated this paper presents empirical results on inventories to consider the possibility of a deeper form of cointegration called multicointegration which is introduced in granger and lee 1989 a vector integrated series is multicointegrated if the accumulated sum of its stationary cointegrated linear combination is again cointegrated with itself inventory which is the accumulated sum of production minus sales is probably cointegrated with production and sales the empirical results generally support the presence of multicointegration of production and sales in many u s industries and industrial aggregates the results also favour the non symmetric error correction model providing evidence that the strength of attraction is different on both sides of the attractor a modified s s rule for inventory control is investigated in the context of a non symmetric error correction model and the results generally do not support the s s rule sufficient evidence is found to conclude that multicointegration is a useful concept in the area of inventory determination

dynamic pricing in the spanish gasoline market a tacit collusion equilibrium abstract during the last twenty years the spanish petrol market has undergone an intensive restructuration process it has changed from being a state owned monopoly to total liberalization and privatization this liberalization process was accompanied by measures that facilitated the creation of a national champion the repsol group which is a huge vertically integrated company with a high market share in all the industry s segments using a dynamic model this paper analyses whether the prices established by companies in the spanish gasoline market after the restructuration process fits with a tacit collusion equilibrium the empirical results show that a strategic behaviour of companies occurs and is compatible with a tacit collusion price strategy so the restructuration process does not seem to have introduced effective competition into the spanish gasoline market

the spanish retail petroleum market new patterns of competition since the liberalization of the industry in this paper we study the recent development of the spanish automotive fuels market in the context of a long process of liberalization and competition our aims are twofold first to overview the market s current patterns of competition while taking into account the political structural and strategic aspects that have marked the industry s recent evolution second to study in depth one competitive strategy that nowadays significantly influences competition and final prices the vertical relationships between operators and service stations our analysis draws attention to several indicators that may demonstrate the success of the opening and liberalization process increased levels of competition have stimulated the sector s growth development and modernization and given national firms an excellent platform for competing with newcomers furthermore studying the vertical agreements has produced interesting results we have found that relative price differences among brands increase in line with perceived quality differences and that the vertical separation of refineries and retailers eases price competition in the final market the empirical evidence was backed up with a database of 4164 spanish service stations

regulation and market power in the spanish liquefied petroleum gas industry progress or failure this paper presents a detailed study of the structure market power and competition in the distribution sector for liquefied petroleum gas lpg within spain it is a segment of energy consumption and supply that is not often given serious attention despite the fact that lpg is a crucial source of energy to many households in many countries in europe and in the rest of the world despite formally being an open and liberalized sector the spanish lpg market is characterized by high concentration within the industry repsol butano the dominant operator practically controls the entire value chain these structural characteristics probably justify state intervention in the form of price fixing in order to guarantee accessible prices for final consumers nevertheless applying this tool has had negative effects on the opening and liberalization process on the one hand it fails to encourage entry or an increase in the participation of new operators on the other it has considerably deteriorated the economic and financial performance of the distribution agents that are subjected to two strong forces first the dominant operator looks after its own interests and its income and second the government tries to defend the interests of final consumers by fixing prices that inadequately remunerate the activity this shows the contradictory regulatory actions that try to promote competition and then establish mechanisms to regulate activity by fixing prices that act as price limits these government set prices discourage new competitors from entering

competition regulation and pricing behaviour in the spanish retail gasoline market abstract the restructuring of the spanish oil industry produced a highly concentrated oligopoly in the retail gasoline market in june 1990 the spanish government introduced a system of ceiling price regulation in order to ensure that liberalization was accompanied by adequate consumer protection by 1998 prices were left to the free market this paper examines the pricing behaviour of the retail gasoline market using multivariate error correction models over the period january 1993 abolishment of the state monopoly december 2004 the results suggest that gasoline retail prices respond symmetrically to increases as well as to decreases in the spot price of gasoline both over the period of price regulation january 1993 september 1998 and over the period of free market october 1998 december 2004 however once the ceiling price regulation was abolished cooperation emerged between the government and the major operators repsol ypf and cepsa elf to control the inflation rate this resulted in a slower rate of adjustment of gasoline retail prices when gasoline spot prices went up as compared with the european pattern finally the spanish retail margin was by the end of our timing period of analysis as in the starting years after the abolishment of the state monopoly above the european average this pattern confirms our political economic hypothesis which suggests that the spanish government and the oil companies were working together in reducing the inflation in periods of rising oil and gasoline prices it is also inferred that explaining the pricing pattern in energy markets may require different hypothesis than the classical perspective involving just firms taking advantage of market power

tariff and environmental policies with product standards for a small open economy with consumption based pollution emissions the first best optimal policy prescription is free trade along with a pigouvian tax on emissions therefore a package of coordinated tax reform by replacing tariffs with emission taxes can lower pollution emissions and increase market access and hence improve residents welfare and government revenue as long as the initial tariffs are relatively high numerical simulations confirm the results obtained abstract from author

do gasoline prices respond asymmetrically to crude oil price changes the authors test and confirm that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases than to decreases in crude oil prices among the possible sources of this asymmetry are production inventory adjustment lags and market power of some sellers by analyzing price transmission at different points in the distribution chain the authors attempt to shed light on these theories spot prices for generic gasoline show asymmetry in responding to crude oil price changes which may reflect inventory adjustment effects asymmetry also appears in the response of retail prices to wholesale price changes possibly indicating short run market power among retailers

taxes cost and demand shifters as determinants in the regional gasoline price formation process evidence from spain abstract this paper examines the pass through of regional tax changes and spot price variations to regional gasoline prices in spain it also analyzes the impact of all major cost and demand shifters that contribute to regional gasoline price formation to address these research issues a reduced form price equation using monthly time series cross sectional tscs data from january 2004 through december 2008 is estimated strong and consistent evidence of full shifting of regional tax changes to regional gasoline prices is found gasoline spot price changes are more than proportionally passed through to retail prices in addition the empirical evidence shows on the one hand that regional gasoline price differences before taxes continue to be quite narrow and on the other hand that there is still a margin for larger gasoline price differences among regions this suggest that traditional practices from the monopoly era i e relatively uniform regional gasoline prices persist after the market has been liberalized which may have been facilitated by the strong and uniform presence of the major spanish based refining companies in the retail sector over the whole country

price adjustments by a gasoline retail chain we use daily data to examine price responses in the swedish gasoline market to changes in the rotterdam spot price exchange rates and taxes the distribution of price adjustments by a leading retail chain for the period january 1980 to december 1996 is symmetric with no small adjustments an error correction model shows that in the short run prices gradually move towards the long run equilibrium in response to cost shocks there is some evidence that also in the short run prices are stickier downwards than upwards prices respond more rapidly to exchange rate movements than to the spot market price our analysis emphasizes that to fully understand price adjustments it is necessary to examine data sets where the sample frequency at least matches that of price adjustments

exploring the life of fuel price responses in retail markets the effect of cross sectional aggregation abstract empirical studies on vertical price transmission in retail fuel markets commonly use average group data of petrol stations in this paper a simulation approach is employed to illustrate that in this case the persistence of price responses tends to be overestimated to explore the real extent of the problem we apply the mean group mg and the mean group with common correlated effects mg cce estimators to individual data from petrol stations when heterogeneity in the pricing dynamics is captured by mg and mg cce estimators persistence of retail price responses becomes considerably lower than the typical ols estimations from average group data would suggest

testing for price response asymmetries in the spanish fuel market new evidence from daily data abstract in this work we use daily data to examine pattern asymmetries in the speed of transmission of international wholesale oil prices to spanish retail fuel prices results are robust to two alternative specifications of an asymmetric error correction model for which the presence of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity for disturbances is modeled by a garch 1 1 process evidence indicates that the short term transmission of wholesale prices to retail prices is quite symmetric for both gasoline and diesel fuel nevertheless in contrast to some of the results provided for an earlier period we did not find asymmetries in the speed of retail price responses toward long run equilibrium our evidence also suggests that the use of weekly or lower frequency data is one of the possible explanations for some of the seemingly contradictory results concerning this issue

new evidence on asymmetric gasoline price responses in a 1997 paper borenstein cameron and gilbert bcg claim that gasoline prices rise quickly following an increase in the price of crude oil but fall slowly following a decrease this note estimates an error correction model with daily spot gasoline and crude oil price data over the period 1985 1998 and finds no evidence of asymmetry in wholesale gasoline prices the sources of the difference in results are twofold first we use the standard engle granger two step estimation procedure whereas bcg used a nonstandard estimation methodology second even using bcg s nonstandard specification the use of daily rather than weekly data yields little evidence of price asymmetry

revamping the weak protecting the strong and managing privatization governing globalization in the spanish takeoff conventional wisdom holds that liberal economic policy and a hasty integration into the european union is the central feature of spain s successful adaptation to the globalizationwave this study argues that a set of illiberal and protectionist policies are crucial to understanding the spanish transformation spain s reorganization of its economy displayed three broad components the revamping of industrial sectors from above the targeted protection granted to the energy banking and telecommunications sectors and a defined strategy of privatization that prevented any major international player from taking part in a given business the author argues that this statist model of market transition in spain was decisively shaped by two concrete features of the spanish political economy as it unfolded under the import substitution industrialization model the organizational and economic weakness of the domestic industrial bourgeoisie and the comparatively entrenched position of financial capital and its ener

minimal and maximal product differentiation in hotelling s duopoly abstract hotelling s 1929 model of duopolistic competition is re examined a family of utility functions is used which has as a special case hotelling s original utility function in a two stage location price game it is shown that an equilibrium exists when the curvature of the utility functions in the space of characteristics is sufficiently high the subgame perfect equilibrium never exhibits minimum product differentiation on the other hand not all equilibria are at maximal product differentiation

the taxation effect on gasoline price asymmetry nexus evidence from both sides of the atlantic this paper explores the degree of competition in various gasoline markets and infers possible causes of price asymmetry across the globe for this purpose we use the dynamic ordinary least square method in order to estimate price asymmetry in twelve european countries and the united states for a sample of weekly observations which spans the period from june 1996 to august 2011 the results indicate the common perception that less competitive gasoline markets exhibit price asymmetry while highly competitive gasoline markets follow a symmetric price adjustment path finally the inclusion of taxes vat and excise tax into retail gasoline prices supports the existence of price asymmetry in many european countries

partial collusion fosters minimum product differentiation we investigate a spatial duopoly in which the firms simultaneously select locations at the beginning of time once chosen the locations are fixed forever but the firms will choose prices in each of a countably infinite succession of time periods we are interested in equilibrium behavior when the firms will collusively arrange a trigger strategy equilibrium in prices and will select their locations knowing that a particular such trigger strategy price equilibrium will ensue specifically we restrict our attention to prices that support an outcome on the profit possibility frontier at which the ratio of firm 1 s profits to those of firm 2 is positively related to the similar ratio of profits at the single shot noncooperative equilibrium for these profit sharing rules the resulting location equilibrium is unique and involves the pairing of firms at the market center

environmental regulation in an open economy abstract environmental regulation by a large trading country affects the world price of traded commodities a series of second best environmental taxes are derived which explicitly incorporate trade effects for cases which depend on the type of externality the regulating country s commodity trade balance and the presence or absence of trade taxes in the regulated market a coordinated policy solution using both tax and tariff instruments also is derived the practical implications for domestic environmental policy making which emerge from the theoretical results are evaluated

trade and pollution linkages piecemeal reform and optimal intervention we demonstrate how coordinated trade and environmental policy can achieve ef ficiency and pollution mitigation gains superior to those obtained without such coordination we show how trade and environment linkages give rise to complex second best policy issues and derive optimal interventions and sufficient conditions for welfare improving piecemeal trade and environmental policy reforms in a small economy changing trade and environ ment distortions in proportion to their optimal levels increases welfare we decompose the economic and environment effects of policies targeted at trade and pollution in both con sumption and production we also decompose production responses into output adjustments and changes in pollution intensities

the spanish oil sector from state intervention to free trade abstract this article describes how the entrance of spain into the ec forced the spanish oil sector to reorganize its relatively inefficient and backward structure in anticipation of future competition and in harmony with ec rules to protect the spanish industry over a transitional period spain replaced its former legal oil monopoly by a de facto monopoly recent developments show parallel with the development of a strong partly privatized state oil company the gradual disintegration of this system this is forcing the smaller private spanish oil companies to establish partnerships with foreign consortia to secure their positions in their home market

asymmetric fuel price responses under heterogeneity we explore the effect of cross sectional aggregation of data on estimation and test of asymmetric retail fuel price responses to wholesale price shocks the analysis is performed on data collected daily from individual fuel stations in the spanish metropolitan areas of madrid and barcelona while the standard ols estimator is applied to an error correction model in the case of the aggregated time series we use the mean group approaches developed by pesaran and smith 1995 and pesaran 2006 to estimate the short and long run micro relations under heterogeneity we found remarkable differences between the results of estimations using aggregated and disaggregated data which are highly robust to both datasets considered our findings could help to explain many of the results in the literature on this research topic on the one hand they suggest that the typical estimation with aggregated data clearly tends to overestimate the persistence of shocks on the other hand we show that aggregation may generate a loss of efficiency in econometric estimates that is sufficiently large to hide the existence of the rockets and feathers phenomenon

do petrol prices increase faster than they fall in market disequilibria abstract this paper tests the idea that petrol prices respond more quickly to price increases than to decreases we show that the results previously documented in the literature for australia are spurious due to failure to establish the stationarity property of the price series and the co integration relationship between retail and wholesale prices when neglecting to account for a regime shift in the data using a robust approach involving a threshold error correction model we find little evidence to support the contention that retail petrol price reverts asymmetrically to long run equilibrium asymmetric adjustments in retail prices are found only in four of the twenty eight retail gas stations in queensland these results cast doubt on the previously reported pervasiveness of this asymmetric price response phenomenon in australia we further caution on erroneous inference with the use of weekly rather than daily data and when failing to account for a regime shift in the data

rockets and feathers revisited an international comparison on european gasoline markets this paper re examines the issue of asymmetries in the transmission of shocks to crude oil prices onto the retail price of gasoline relative to the previous literature the distinguishing features of the present paper are i use of updated and comparable data to carry out an international comparison of gasoline markets ii two stage modeling of the transmission of oil price shocks to gasoline prices first refinery stage and second distribution stage in order to assess possible asymmetries at either one or both stages iii use of asymmetric error correction models to distinguish between asymmetries that arise from short run deviations in input prices and from the speed at which the gasoline price reverts to its long run level iv explicit possibly asymmetric role of the exchange rate as crude oil is paid for in dollars whereas gasoline sells for different sums of national currencies v bootstrapping of f tests of asymmetries in order to overcome the lowpower problem of conventional testing procedures in contrast to several previous findings the results generally point to widespread differences in both adjustment speeds and short run responses when input prices rise or fall

price asymmetry in the dutch retail gasoline market abstract this article analyses the retail price adjustments in the dutch gasoline market we estimate an asymmetric error correction model on weekly price changes for the years 1996 2001 we construct five datasets one for each working day the conclusions on asymmetric pricing are shown to differ over these datasets suggesting that the choice of the day for which the prices are observed matters more than commonly believed in our view the insufficient robustness of the outcomes might explain the mixed conclusions found in the literature using these two approaches we also show that the effect of asymmetry on the dutch consumer costs is negligible

regulation of externalities in an open economy abstract this paper considers the ranking of second best policies for an open economy that regulate externalities arising from the production of an exportable pesticides and other chemicals used in us agriculture are good examples uncertainty originates from three sources random shifts in production cost and external costs and the random fluctuations in the world price of a traded good world prices become unreliable indicators of comparative advantages in the presence of external costs nonintervention of free trade can encourage excessive production and exports of commodities with spurious comparative advantages the paper analyses the properties of the optimal state contingent tax or first best tax which is difficult to implement these properties are then used to rank second best policies that are determined before uncertainties are resolved it is shown that ex ante taxes and quotas are equivalent when the marginal external cost is subject to random shifts when the world price is uncertain the optimal ex ante effluent charge dominates the optimal quantity standard when the marginal production cost of the exportable is subject to random shifts the ranking of second best policies is generally ambiguous