WORKING 

PAPERS 

Local Market Structure and Strategic Organizational Form Choices: 

Evidence from Gasoline Stations

Nathan E. Wilson 

WORKING PAPER NO. 311 

March 2012 

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BUREAU OF ECONOMICS 

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 

WASHINGTON, DC 20580
Local Market Structure and Strategic Organizational Form Choices:

Evidence from Gasoline Stations

Nathan E. Wilson∗

March 9, 2012

Abstract

An extensive literature shows that agency issues and transactions costs influence vertical

integration. Another mature literature indicates that market structure influences competitive behavior. However, less consideration has been given to how vertical integration

and market structure may interact. I address this gap by focusing on the potential for

moral hazard caused by intra-firm competition in retail gasoline markets. I argue that

when multiple stations share a common brand in a market, a vertically separated station has an incentive to deviate from the cooperative strategy that the brand-owning

refiner would prefer. I empirically test this prediction using rich data, and find evidence

of such moral hazard. Moreover, I find that refiners behave in a way consistent with the

desire to minimize it: They are more likely to employ vertically separated contracts in

markets where the number of affiliated stations is small.

JEL classification: D2, L14, L22, L81

Keywords: Gasoline, moral hazard, vertical contracting, price setting

∗Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Economics, 600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC, 20580. nwilson@ftc.gov. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Federal Trade

Commission or any of its Commissioners. I am grateful for comments from Itai Ater and Anne Fleischer as well as

those from John Yun, Dan Hosken, Chris Taylor, Dave Balan, and other colleagues at the FTC. The usual caveat

applies.

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1 Introduction

A large and growing literature demonstrates theoretically and empirically that firms offering multiple differentiated products in the same market incur both costs and benefits.1 Economists also

have long devoted attention to showing how agency theory (Holmstrom and Milgrom, 1991), transactions costs (Williamson, 1975), and the property rights theory of the firm (Grossman and Hart,

1986, Hart and Moore, 1990) may explain firm boundaries, finding much support for their predictions across a variety of contexts (Lafontaine and Slade, 2007). Considering the richness of these

literatures, comparatively little attention has gone to understanding how they may intersect. In

particular, there is little treatment of the interrelated questions of how market structure could

influence the choice of vertical contracts and how vertical contracts could lead to different product

market behavior depending on the local market structure.

I address these gaps by investigating the relationship between market structure and vertical

contracting in the retail gasoline industry. It is an ideal setting to consider these issues as a gasoline

refiner may have multiple stations in a given market selling their gasoline. (I refer to stations sharing

the same refiner brand as being “affiliated.”) Moreover, refiners’ affiliated stations may be operated

under two different classes of contract. The first type is vertically integrated insofar as refiner

employees staff the station, and the refiner remains the residual claimant. In contrast, the second

class of contract makes local managers the residual claimants and allocates them extensive control

rights. It is thus an example of vertical separation.

The principal-agent framework straightforwardly extends to suggest why a vertically separated

station should behave differently than an integrated one in markets where there is (are) one (or

more) affiliated station(s). By virtue of being the residual claimant, managers at vertically separated

stations are incentivized to prioritize the performance of their station. Therefore, when choosing

their profit-maximizing strategies, a vertically separated station manager will only pay attention to

1A benefit might be deterring entry by competitors, while the costs could include cannibalizing revenue from their

existing products. See discussion in Sutton (2007).

2
the impact of a strategy’s impact on their station’s profits. They ignore any impact of those strategies on affiliated stations. In contrast, the manager of a vertically integrated station’s incentives are

not so narrowly focused, and their strategy may incorporate the effects on all affiliated stations.

Left unrestrained, the tendency of vertically separated stations to ignore the competitive externalities of their product market behavior on affiliated stations would cause the joint profits of

all affiliated stations in the market to be lower than the profit-maximizing level. Therefore, the

existence of affiliated stations in a given market increases refiners’ exposure to moral hazard if they

use a vertically separated contract. Thus, market structure can be thought of in the same light as

other forms of moral hazard caused by vertical separation (Klein, 1980, 1995, Brickley and Dark,

1987, Brickley, 1999, Laffont and Martimort, 2002).

As noted in Winter (2009), the legal system makes it difficult for principals like refiners to

contractually restrain pro-competitive behavior (like price-cutting) on the part of their agents.

Therefore, economic behavior on the part of both vertically-separated station managers and refiners

should vary depending on local market structure. Exploiting rich data on retail gasoline markets,

I test this prediction. My chief findings regarding the empirical importance of competition-driven

moral hazard are as follows.

First, the data show that gasoline refiners are more likely to employ vertically separated contracts in markets where they have fewer affiliated stations. This result is consistent with a desire

to avoid the type of competition-driven moral hazard described above. However, I find evidence of

monitoring complementarities from the presence of other vertically separated outlets. Specifically,

the data show that the greater the share of nearby affiliated outlets operated under vertically separated contracts, the greater the likelihood that another outlet will be vertically separated. This

result suggests that the marginal cost of monitoring an additional station is lower in areas where

monitoring must already take place, an idea exploited in several recent papers considering the

impact of organizational form on economic behavior (Kosova et al., 2010, Wilson, 2011b).

Second, using a difference in differences approach to estimation, I find that the presence of

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affiliated stations is correlated with different economic behaviors depending on whether a station is

operated under a vertically separated or vertically integrated contract. For example, stations operated under vertically separated contracts are more likely to reduce prices as the affiliated presence

increases. This effect is consistent with the idea that sharing a local market produces moral hazard

for managers at vertically separated stations who are not incentivized to price “cooperatively.”

Moreover, I show that the quality of vertically separated stations’ appearances are decreasing in

the number of affiliated outlets in the market. This result is in line with the idea that consumers

are influenced by the local reputation of a given brand in making their purchasing decisions. Thus,

there is an externality to quality provision much as there is for “cooperative” pricing.

Overall, the paper contributes to a number of literatures. First, it extends the small but growing body of work assessing how economic behavior varies across vertical contracts (Novak and

Stern, 2008, Forbes and Lederman, 2010, Kosova et al., 2010, Wilson, 2011b). These papers have

expanded on much of the previous vertical contracting literature by more explicitly accounting for

the endogeneity of contracts. However, they concentrate on characteristics that might be thought

to affect the choice, and subsequent behavior, for traditional agency theoretic and/or transactions

costs reasons, abstracting from the competition-related factors focused upon in this paper. Like

previous papers within this literature focusing on the gasoline industry (Barron and Umbeck, 1984,

Vita, 2000, Wilson, 2011b), I find that vertical separation is correlated with higher prices. The

present work extends the prior literature by showing that the magnitude of the vertical separation

effect is correlated with a function of local market structure.

Second, the paper contributes to a line of research focusing on intra-firm competition in franchise

industries. Hadfield (1991) points out that vertically separating control of multiple outlets may

successfully enable an incumbent franchisor to deter entry from competing firms. However, in

practice, agents are thought to fear that any potential benefits from softer intra-brand competition

will be swamped by the cannibalization effect of customer stealing by affiliated outlets. Kalnins

(2004) and Wilson (2011a) present evidence that such fears of “encroachment” are justified in

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hotel markets, while Thomadsen (2005) documents intensified competition between affiliated fast

food outlets. The present paper contributes to this literature by documenting behavioral variation

depending on the local market structure in the gasoline industry. Moreover, my results on quality

determination are consistent with the idea that encroachment matters not just in terms of revenue

cannibalization, but also in its implications for reputational free-riding.

The paper proceeds as follows. In section 2, I sketch the theoretical intuition for expecting

behavior at vertically separated stations to differ in multi-product markets. Section 3 describes the

institutional characteristics of the retail gasoline industry, while section 4 discusses the data used

to test the hypotheses highlighted in section 2. Sections 5 and 6 present econometric analyses of

how contract utilization and behavior vary with local market structure. The paper concludes in

section 6.

2 Market Structure and Vertical Separation

Agency problems arise when employers cannot perfectly infer employee effort from observable information. Franchise and other vertically separated contracts address this problem by tying local

agents’ (i.e., franchisees) salaries to some visually observable performance metric. This helps to

better align their incentives with those of the principal (i.e., franchisor). When two contracts have

the same expected value for agent compensation, the contract with the higher variable component

is considered “higher-powered.” This is because it gives stronger incentives (i.e., higher residual

claims) to the local agent to exert costly effort.2

While vertically separated contracts tie compensation to local performance in order to elicit

higher effort, they also frequently contain provisions constraining elements of agent behavior. This

is because principals’ interests are rarely one dimensional. In addition to wanting to maximize static

2Agents’ ownership of the local assets is not a prerequisite for a vertically separated contract; rather, it is such contracts’

transfer of the right to residual claims and the ability of agents to influence them that are critical elements to focus

upon. In practice, most vertically-separated contracts turn over control rights to the local agent, while the principal

receives a portion of the outlet’s total revenues in return for allowing agents the right to affiliate with their brand.

The remainder of the local revenues are kept by the agent. Depending on the industry, agents’ ownership of the local

assets varies.

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profits, principals frequently have dynamic concerns related to things like brand equity, which they

may fear that local managers will not value. For example, Brickley and Dark (1987) note that when

customers are unlikely to visit a given outlet again, an agent with a high-powered contract may

shirk on those elements that go to maintaining the brand’s reputation. Brickley and Dark (1987)

argued that this suggests that vertically separated contracts should be less likely to be used in

environments where the likelihood of non-repeat customers was high.3

Because of such concerns, the overall viability of vertically separated contracts depends crucially

on the ability of the principal to observe and punish agents’ deviations from specified behavior.

Consistent with this, Brickley et al. (1991) show that vertically separated contracts are less likely

to be used in U.S. states that have laws inhibiting the termination of franchise contracts.

It is straightforward to see why moral hazard problems similar to those noted by Brickley and

Dark (1987) may arise if there are multiple affiliated outlets in the same market. Consider the

example of a retail industry where branded outlets compete on factors influenced by the local

manager’s efforts. The brand-owner is the contract-offering principal, while the manager of a local

outlet is the agent. The brand-owner can employ either low-powered contracts, which involve using

salaried employees to manage an outlet, or high-powered vertically separated contracts that give

the local manager a direct stake as well as control over the locally determined factors influencing

sales.

Assume that the market is sufficiently large for the brand-owner to choose to open two outlets.

Because the principal’s benefit derives from the performance of both outlets, it would prefer that

they adopt strategies maximizing their joint profits. This is what will occur if the principal uses

its own salaried employees at both stations. If, however, the principal uses different high-powered

agents, it could lead to either more or less intense competition than the principal would prefer.4

For example, if competition takes place in prices, then the high-powered agents will price lower

3This prediction was born out in the authors’ cross-industry analyses. However, tests just using data on fast food

outlets were less obviously supportive.

4The story applies equally to settings where one outlet is vertically integrated and one is vertically separated. The

crucial detail is that ownership is not unified.

6
than the principal would prefer to try to steal sales from the other outlet. Thus, agents are excessively competing from the perspective of the principal. By contrast, if demand is influenced by

a brand’s local reputation for quality, high-powered agents will be more inclined to free-ride since

they do not reap the full benefit of investments in a brand’s reputation.5In this case, the agents are

choosing a less intense strategy than the principal would prefer. For both situations, the problem

is that the high-powered agent does not internalize the competition-related externality from their

actions.

This competition-driven moral hazard would be very difficult for the principal to inhibit once

contracts had been chosen. While prices might seem easy to observe, there remains considerable

ambiguity about the legality of disciplining an agent for doing pro-competitive things like reducing

prices (Winter, 2009). As a result, franchise contracts typically do not permit a principal to mandate

price floors (Blair and Lafontaine, 2005). There are no such questions about the legitimacy of

punishing agents who shirk on quality. However, identifying violators would be problematic, and

navigating the court system can be difficult even in the best of circumstances (see, e.g., the anecdotes

in Lafontaine et al. (2011)). Because of these types of concerns, a rational, profit-seeking principal

should therefore be less likely to employ vertically separated forms in markets with (more) affiliated

outlets all else equal.

It is worth noting, however, that there could be other reasons to expect local market structure

to influence economic behavior and vertical contract utilization. Moreover, these other factors may

undercut, or even offset, the effects of competition-driven moral hazard. First, if a franchisor already

has a large number of vertically separated outlets in a given area that it must regularly monitor,

then the marginal cost of monitoring an additional vertically separated outlet could be lower than

somewhere it has no other stations to monitor. Such monitoring efficiencies could increase the

5The assumption that consumers are most affected by the appearance of local outlets does not seem strong. For

example, it can be justified by assuming that consumers weight their opinions of brands based on their views of

affiliated outlets. Insofar as consumers are likely to see local outlets more often than those far away, their perspective

on a brand as a whole is likely to be especially influenced by local factors. See, e.g., Bronnenberg et al. (2009, 2010)

for evidence of enduring loyalty to local brands.

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desirability of separated forms in markets with more than one affiliated outlets. There is no clear

prediction about how such efficiencies would impact economic behavior.

Second, Blair and Lafontaine (2006) suggest that there may be economies of scale in advertising

in franchising industries. If franchisees are thought to be better at advertising and other local

promotions, as they are in the retail gasoline industry (Kleit, 2005), it might also lead to greater

utilization of vertically separated contracts in markets with more affiliated outlets. It should also

lead to higher prices.

In many circumstances, both competition-driven moral hazard and externality-related benefits

to separation may simultaneously be at work. In such circumstances, the dominant influence will

be an empirical question.

3 Institutional Background

Gasoline stations can be divided into two categories. The first set of stations are those whose

marquee identifies the vertically integrated refiner (e.g., Exxon or Shell) whose gas – and only

whose gas – is sold there. Even though not all stations affiliated with these refiners are operated

under vertically integrated contracts, they are referred to as vertically integrated. This is because

they have an active branded presence in retail markets, and do not just produce gasoline for sale in

the wholesale market. Kleit (2005) indicates that refiner-affiliated stations accounted for 78 percent

of the industry in 2002. The remaining stations are commonly referred to as independents because

as they are not tied to any particular refiner. As a result, they may purchase whatever brand of

gasoline they choose in the wholesale market. Insofar as they are the dominant type of station, I

focus on the issues affecting contract choice at refiner-affiliated stations.6

Despite the fact that gasoline stations’ core product is comparatively homogeneous, gasoline

6Like the stations affiliated with vertically integrated refiners, independent stations may be branded (e.g., Sheetz).

The independent brands must address many of the same agency and moral hazard issues as integrated refiners.

Interestingly, preliminary regressions that included them did not lead to qualitatively different results. However, since

their cost functions are different in kind from the refiner-affiliated stations, I believe it is more appropriate to exclude

them. Details are available upon request.

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stations engage in differentiated competition.7 This is because retail gasoline markets vary in terms

of consumer tastes and demographics. Moreover, and not unrelatedly, stations are differentiated

in terms of non-gasoline “quality” (e.g., service, station cleanliness), geographic location, and the

presence (or absence) of alternative services (e.g., convenience stores, repair bays).

To deal with such heterogeneity, vertically integrated gasoline refiners employ a variety of contracts that differ in their implications for local control. As has been previously recognized, these

contract choices connect in a straightforward manner to principal-agent models of vertical integration and the franchising literature (see, e.g., Shepard (1993), Slade (1996)). The refiners are the

principals, while individual gasoline station managers are the agents. As in other retail industries

(Blair and Lafontaine, 2005), the principal (i.e., the refiner) sets the terms of the contracts, which

Slade (1996) notes tend to be linear with a fixed component and a variable component connected

to station sales.8

The first type of commonly utilized contract is one in which the station and the land on which

it sits are wholly-owned by the refiners. All personnel at such “company-owned and operated”

stations are salaried refiner employees, and all decision-making authority resides with the principal

(i.e., the refiner). While there may be occasional intra-firm tournaments to induce extra effort from

employees, the station personnel never have control over pricing, nor do they have any incentive to

exert special effort to maximize local profits. As these agents’ long-run career interests are tied to

promotion within the firm, it is reasonable to expect them to value relatively equally profits at all

affiliated stations.

In addition to this canonical example of a low-powered contract, the retail gasoline industry

uses three other contracts. Each of these is a variant of traditional high-powered, vertically separated contracts wherein the principal fully transfers incentives and local control to outside parties.

7See Kleit (2005) or Hosken et al. (2008) for recent surveys of retail gasoline markets.

8

It is rare to find a firm that uses only one type of contract. In other words, most gasoline refiners are at an “interior

solution” in the words of Krueger (1991). The fact that firms commonly utilize multiple contract types has the

desirable econometric implication that I can control for brand-level heterogeneity in the empirical work below; the

firm-level fixed effects will not be perfectly correlated with contract choices.

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However, as described further below, there are modest differences across them.9

The most commonly utilized of the vertically separated forms is called a “lessee dealer” arrangement. In this contract, the vertically integrated refiner still owns the land and building; however,

instead of using salaried employees, the refiner leases the station to a local agent, who purchases

gasoline at a price set by the refiner (see Meyer and Fischer (2004) for additional details on these

arrangements). The lessee dealers then behave as entrepreneurs with respect to station operations,

setting prices for gasoline and all other goods and services (including repairs if the station has

service bays). Thus, local agents’ incentives under lessee dealer contracts encourage them to focus

only on the performance of individual stations.

The next contract closely resembles lessee dealer arrangements except that the local agent owns

the land and station and, therefore, pays no rental fee to the refiner. Presumably because the local

outlet is not tied through property ownership to any given refiner, the contract type is referred to as

an “open dealer” arrangement.10 Again, local managers under this contractual form are incentivized

to prioritize the performance of their individual station.

The final contract type is identical to open dealer arrangements but for the fact that the owner

of the land and station owns multiple stations, a situation common in other franchising industries

(Kalnins and Lafontaine, 2004). These stations are often all in the same area (see, e.g., DeBonis

(2011)). The owners often are branded convenience store chains or gasoline wholesalers known as

“jobbers.” As a result, the contract category is referred to as “jobber/wholesaler.” Because of the

multi-unit aspect, the final contract type is a bit different. The owner’s interests span a number of

units, which might be thought to attenuate focus on individual stations. In this case, the “true”

local managers may be less high-powered than open dealers or lessee dealers, unless the jobber

has adopted lessee dealer arrangements of its own. Regardless, however, the manager of a station

operated under a jobber/wholesaler contract will not have contractual or career incentives linking

9For lengthier treatments of these different forms, see one of the many papers examining competition and form choice

in this industry (Slade, 1996, Blass and Carlton, 2001, Kleit, 2005, Wilson, 2011b).

10Anecdotally, there is evidence bearing out the implication that open dealers can switch their affiliated refiner easily.

10
their station’s behavior to affiliated stations unless they are owned by the same jobber/wholesaler.

Although there are important differences across the different vertically separated contracts, recent research by Wilson (2011b) suggests that lessee dealer, open dealer, and jobber stations all

charge higher prices, ceteris paribus, than vertically integrated stations. I attributed this to a combination of the agents’ effort-induced increases in consumer demand as well as double-marginalization.

Moreover, I found that the assumption that the margin of increase in price relative to vertical integration was equal for all of these forms generally could not be rejected.11

In the present paper, I take advantage of this behavioral similarity to simplify the analysis,

focusing on the difference between integrated (i.e., company owned and operated) and separated

(i.e., lessee dealer, open dealer, and jobber) stations. (Shepard (1993) takes a similar econometric

approach in her analysis of the impact of vertical separation on pricing.) To the extent that some

forms – e.g., jobber-owned – may be closer to company-ownership than others, this approach will

understate differences, and hence is a conservative one.12

4 Data

As in Wilson (2011b), I rely upon regional censuses of retail gasoline stations assembled by New

Image Marketing, a consulting company, whose employees assessed observable station characteristics before talking with on-site staff about stations’ ownership and other factors. In the data,

stations are uniquely identified by location code within states. Restricting the sample to branded

stations affiliated with refiners leaves 4687 station-period observations affiliated with 3677 different

unique station location codes.13 Although not common, some station locations do change brands

during the sample period. These changes appear unrelated to changes in organizational form or

other important factors.

11Wilson (2011b) presented evidence, however, that the forms may lead to different sales volumes, suggesting different

proportions of effort-shifting relative to double marginalization.

12In Table B-3 in Appendix B, I present behavioral results when each type of contract is used. They indicate that all

of the paper’s baseline results are qualitatively robust to the disaggregation of contract types.

13The retail chains included in the branded sample are: Amoco, Ashland, BP, Chevron, Citgo, Conoco, Crown, Exxon,

Marathon, Mobil, Phillips, Shamrock, Shell, Sinclair, Speedway, Super America, Sunoco, Texaco, and Total.

11
The operations surveyed by New Image are in the Denver, Minneapolis, Toledo, Louisville,

and Washington, DC metro areas. The data are from 1996 and 1999. Table B-1 in the Appendix

shows that observations are not evenly distributed across time periods or states. Moreover, Table

B-2 indicates that the usage of the different forms varies widely across metro areas, which reflects

– in part – the fact that some states in the sample have “divorcement” laws. These restrict refiners’ ability to own and operate stations.14 Overall, company-owned, lessee dealer, open dealer,

and jobber/wholesaler contracts account for 15 percent, 39 percent, 24 percent, and 22 percent

of station-year observations, respectively. The share of stations operated directly by refiners is

consistent with the estimated national average of 10-20 percent cited in Kleit (2005).

In addition to considering where vertically separated contracts are employed, I analyze pricing

and quality provision. In analyzing price, I use the listed prices of regular, super, and premium

quality gasolines. In order to assess quality, I use New Image’s impression of the appearance of

the station. This variable was recorded as a categorical variable with six possible values. However,

I simplify it to a binary variable taking the value of one when a station receives one of the two

highest quality scores.15

As with much of the prior literature focusing on competition and market structure, I use zipcodes

to distinguish different local markets.16 This choice is not without its potential problems. As Mazzeo

(2002) and others have noted, there can be concerns about using geographic regions to define

markets, which has led some to use mileage bands (Shepard, 1993, Hosken et al., 2008). However,

concerns about markets based on geographic definitions are particularly pronounced when there

are large asymmetries across them.17 Insofar as all of my zipcodes are in metropolitan areas,

14Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia all have divorcement laws. As noted above, these laws limit (or

prohibit) use of salaried operations. The strength of these laws varies across the different states, with those of Maryland

and DC being much stronger than that of Virginia. See Vita (2000) for details on divorcement laws.

15The precise definition of the quality variable is given in Appendix A along with all other variables. I also record

any possible transformations for use in the econometric analysis there. To ensure that the utilization of a binary

choice model did not drive the results, I examined the implications of using ordered choice models under the implicit

assumption of consistent grading by New Image employees. I generated qualitatively similar results.

16For recent examples, see Zhu et al. (2009), Berry and Waldfogel (2010), Ellickson (forthcoming).

17Moreover, it is worth noting that such asymmetries also may affect exogenously determined spatial definitions. See

Kalnins (2004) for more discussion of this issue.

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Table 1: Descriptive Statistics

Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Regular 4239 116.61 13.76 79.90 167.90

Medium 4236 126.61 13.17 86.90 186.90

Premium 4239 134.76 12.51 88.90 193.90

1(Appearance) 4612 0.15 0.36 0.00 1.00

Local Presence 4612 1.26 1.42 0.00 8.00

Share Separated 4612 0.83 0.25 0.00 1.00

Competitors 4612 9.63 6.80 0.00 36.00

1(C-Store) 4612 0.72 0.45 0.00 1.00

1(Service Bays) 4612 0.40 0.49 0.00 1.00

Nozzles 4460 18.22 9.96 2.00 60.00

Volume 4460 104.85 50.52 10.00 400.00

Pop. (’000s) 4612 620.67 295.13 40.99 1109.63

Income (’000) 4612 58.10 14.59 35.47 96.69

I believe that such problems are not likely to be acute here. Moreover, to further account for

variation across markets, I obtain county-level data on population from the U.S. Census and average

household income (in thousands) taken from the Statistics of Income (SOI) collected by the Internal

Revenue Service to further account for market heterogeneity.18 Finally, as I frequently have multiple

observations in a given area (as well as multiple years of data for many zipcodes), I can control for

unobserved geographic heterogeneity that might lead to systematic differences in behavior across

areas.

To capture the character of competition facing a given station, I use the numbers of brandaffiliated and unaffiliated stations in the zipcode. The unaffiliated category includes independents

as well as stations affiliated with other refiners because consumers are unlikely to discriminate

between them.19 To be specific, I model the local market structure facing a given station i, ωi, as

(Ai, Ni), where A is the number of stations sharing the same brand as the station of interest, and

N is the number of all other stations. Thus, Aiis equal to one if there is one additional filling

18See http://www.census.gov/popest/counties/ and http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=120303,00.html, respectively.

19One might reasonably be concerned that a greater share of independents indicates something about the degree of

wholesale competition. Therefore, I include the fraction of local gasoline retailers accounted for by independents in

robustness regressions. I did not find that it had a dramatic influence on the results.

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station selling the same brand of gasoline as station i in the zipcode. Similarly, Ni would be equal

to five if there were five stations affiliated either with different refiners or wholly independent of

refiner networks in the zipcode.

To control for the possible existence of monitoring complementarities when assessing the desirability of using a vertically separated form, I use the share of other stations in a given county

in a given year that are operated under vertically separated contracts.20 It should be noted that

this approach takes contemporaneous form choices of the affiliated outlets as predetermined, which

could raise concerns about simultaneity. I do not dismiss these concerns; however, as shown below,

checks exploiting the previous year’s choices suggest that this approach does not lead to significantly biased results.21 Therefore, to maximize my sample size, my baseline approach is to use the

contemporaneous measure.

Besides each station’s brand affiliation, the New Image data provide information on a large

number of station features. These include the presence of a convenience store, the presence of

service bays, and the number of fuel pump nozzles.22 I include all these variables as controls in my

analyses. I show descriptive statistics for all station-year observations in Table 1.

Table 2 shows summary statistics for all of the different outcome and explanatory variables for

vertically integrated and separated stations. Consistent with Wilson (2011b), it shows that prices

are consistently higher at vertically separated stations. Similarly, it shows that the “quality” (as

20I use the number of affiliated outlets in the county as opposed to the zipcode for several reasons. Primarily, this reflects

the fact that I believe that conditional on traveling from their headquarters to a given county, it costs principals

relatively little to travel between zipcodes to monitor different stations. In addition, because brands frequently do not

have more than one outlet in a zipcode, it is hard to precisely identify the impact of contracting complementarities,

though Wilson (2011b) reports that using zipcode-level shares did not qualitatively change the results of the analysis.

One might also worry that this model of monitoring costs misses important details such as differences across

counties with different total numbers of stations. Therefore, I experimented with specifications that included both

the number of affiliated outlets and the share (as well as an interaction term between them). This approach led to

almost identical results. Therefore, I present the more parsimonious specification here. Details are available upon

request.

21Somewhat similarly, in the models reported in the paper, I use the contemporaneous values of the number of brandaffiliated and unaffiliated stations. This might also give rise to concern about simultaneity bias. However, regressions

where I replaced the contemporaneous values with one year lags led to qualitatively similar results to those presented

in the paper. Given the strong degree of autocorrelation for local market structures, the tests are not dispositive.

Nevertheless, I think they suggest that any simultaneity bias is of comparatively limited magnitude.

22In most cases, these data were collected as categorical variables. Insofar as different inspectors were utilized, I simplify

the variables to dichotomous variables except in the case of relatively objective factors like the number of nozzles.

14
Table 2: Descriptive Statistics across Vertically Integrated and Separated Stations

Integrated Separated

Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev. Obs Mean Std. Dev. T-Test

Regular 657 106.63 16.37 3642 118.53 12.36 -70.74

Medium 657 117.86 14.70 3639 128.29 12.19 -65.06

Premium 657 127.03 14.11 3642 136.28 11.66 -58.88

1(Appearance) 823 0.25 0.43 3864 0.13 0.33 4.81

Local Presence 823 1.37 1.57 3864 1.22 1.38 3.08

Share Separated 823 0.47 0.36 3864 0.89 0.17 -19.13

Competitors 823 10.40 7.85 3864 9.48 6.53 8.74

1(C-Store) 823 0.67 0.47 3864 0.73 0.45 -2.34

1(Service Bays) 823 0.06 0.24 3864 0.46 0.50 -19.71

Nozzles 671 20.13 10.91 3864 17.79 9.73 17.07

Volume 671 138.63 51.25 3864 99.15 47.81 132.53

Pop. (’000s) 823 545.48 274.94 3864 634.68 295.96 -139.20

Income (’000) 823 59.21 14.55 3864 57.59 14.59 11.07

proxied for by appearance) of vertically integrated stations is consistently higher. This is in line

with the findings of Michael (2000) and Jin and Leslie (2009) in other industries, and consistent

with the prediction of Brickley and Dark (1987) that franchisees may not have the same incentives

to exert effort on activities that benefit the entire brand.

Intuition about the strategic deployment of different contractual forms depending on local market structure can be gained by examining Table 3, which shows the breakdown of station-year

observations by vertical contract type depending on the number of local affiliates. Consistent with

the existence of competition-driven moral hazard, the Table indicates that a higher proportion

of outlets are operated under vertically separated contracts in zipcodes without an affiliated outlet than in the sample as a whole. Moreover, there is declining utilization of vertically separated

contracts as the number of affiliated outlets increases. Accordingly, the opposite results hold for

vertically integrated stations. While the effects are not large, they are strikingly monotonic.

While Table 3 indicates contract usage patterns are consistent with concern about competitiondriven moral hazard, one might reasonably wonder if there might be other drivers. I therefore

examine if there are detectable behavioral differences across market structures and contract types

15
Table 3: Affiliated Presence and Contract Utilization

Integrated Separated Total

Zero Affiliated 308 1,519 1,827

16.86 83.14 100

One Affiliated 217 1,029 1,246

17.42 82.58 100

Two Affiliated 155 703 858

18.07 81.93 100

> Two Affiliated 143 613 756

18.92 81.08 100

Total 823 3,864 4,687

17.56 82.44 100

Rows in italics indicate percentages of observations within

row.

in Table 4. The Table shows how the means of all station-year observations of prices and appearance

quality vary depending on both contractual form and the number of affiliated outlets in the zipcode.

The results do not indicate different trends for the prices charged by integrated and separated

stations as the number of local affiliates increases. For both types of contract, there is a slight

downward trend.

Table 4 shows less ambiguity, however, in the relationship between vertical separation, market

structure, and the quality of stations’ appearance. The Table shows a clear positive correlation

between the presence of affiliated stations and the provision of quality for vertically integrated

stores. This is consistent with the idea that there are positive local reputational spillovers that the

principal is incentivized to internalize. By contrast, there is no trend for vertically separated outlets,

which is in line with the comparative absence of any such incentive for their local managers.

Overall, the aggregate data patterns presented in Tables 3 and 4 suggest differences in both

economic behavior across forms and the utilization of organizational forms that are consistent

with competition-related moral hazard. However, the differences in Table 2 also suggest systematic

selection of different contract types in different environments. This makes it impossible to conclude

anything with confidence about the empirical relevance of competition-driven moral hazard at this

16
Table 4: Variation in Economic Behavior across Market Structure and Contract Forms

Variable Obs Mean Std. Dev. Obs Mean Std. Dev.

Integrated Separated

Zero Affiliated

Regular 236 108.40 15.47 1428 119.31 11.89

Super 236 119.10 13.74 1426 128.53 11.88

Premium 236 128.29 13.01 1428 136.71 11.48

1(Appearance) 308 0.17 0.38 1519 0.12 0.33

Unaffiliated Competitors 308 7.58 6.74 1519 6.98 5.34

One Affiliated

Regular 170 106.73 17.69 977 118.63 12.21

Super 170 118.05 16.20 976 128.78 12.11

Premium 170 127.16 15.94 977 136.62 11.63

1(Appearance) 217 0.25 0.43 1029 0.12 0.33

Unaffiliated Competitors 217 9.54 6.59 1029 9.65 5.97

Two Affiliated

Regular 126 106.71 17.91 661 117.97 12.57

Super 126 118.63 16.11 661 128.29 12.11

Premium 126 127.84 15.42 661 136.04 11.62

1(Appearance) 155 0.28 0.45 703 0.15 0.35

Unaffiliated Competitors 155 11.96 7.77 703 11.53 6.79

> Two Affiliated

Regular 125 103.08 13.95 576 117.08 13.33

Super 125 114.48 12.31 576 126.89 13.07

Premium 125 123.65 11.45 576 134.90 12.14

1(Appearance) 143 0.36 0.48 613 0.12 0.32

Unaffiliated Competitors 143 16.11 8.56 613 13.02 7.27

17
stage. To obtain a more precise understanding, I therefore move to econometric frameworks that

exploit within and between station variation in the data.

5 Strategic Form Choice

5.1 Identification and Inference

In this section, I assess whether gasoline refiners respond to the potential for competition-driven

moral hazard by varying their utilization of vertically separated contracts. As noted above in

section 2, there also are reasons to believe that there are contracting complementarities that affect

the relative desirability of vertically separated forms. Therefore, it is possible that the presence of

local affiliates under different contracts have different effects on the desirability of using a vertically

separated form at a specific outlet.

I accommodate the possibility of both competition-driven moral hazard and monitoring efficiencies in the following estimating equation of vertically integrated refiners’ decision to utilize a

vertically separated contract:

Fit = Aitδ + Sitα + Nitρ + Xitλ + Ziν + uit, (1)

where i and t index stations and time of observation, respectively. (For the sake of concision, I

suppress market subscripts.) F is a binary variable taking the value of one if station i is vertically

separated at time t; A indicates the local market presence of the principal affiliated with station

i at that time; S indicates the share of affiliated outlets in the county that are operated under

vertically separated contracts; and N is the number of other competitors in the zipcode.23 Xit and

Zi continute to represent time-varying and time invariant station characteristics, respectively, while

uit is information unobservable to the econometrician.

The coefficients of interest are δ and α. Respectively, these account for the direct impact of

23See footnote 20 above for details on the usage of county vs. zipcode level data.

18
the number of affiliated outlets in the zipcode and the impact of the share of outlets in the county

that are contemporaneously organized as separated on the likelihood of using a vertically separated

contractual form. By including S as well as A, I am able to separately consider the influence of

competition-driven moral hazard and monitoring complementarities on form choice. The stories

outlined above in section 2 predicts a negatively signed δ and a positive α.

In terms of the market competition variables, Equation (3) implies linear effects from the different types of competitors, as in Davis (2006). (However, the inclusion of S allows for the possibility

of non-linearity from the type of contracts at comparatively proximate stations.) As described further below, I check the importance of the linearity assumptions, and find that the paper’s results

are qualitatively robust to non-linear alternatives.

In addition to the observable explanatory variables discussed in the previous section, I include

brand and state-date indicator variables in all regressions.24 Thus, I ensure that my estimates

are based off of variation within brands, dates, and region, avoiding the possibility of confusing

the impact of form with temporally or regulatorily driven differences as well as the possibility of

idiosyncratic brand strategies. This is important because Hosken et al. (2008) show that different

gasoline chains pursue different pricing strategies, while the existence and severity of divorcement

laws varies across the sample regions (Vita, 2000, Blass and Carlton, 2001). Moreover, New Image

collected prices at different stations on separate days within a given year; however, the data were

collected on the same day within regions.

In estimating Equation (1), the concern is that there will be a systematic connection between

market structure and contractual type not being accounted for by the observable information. This

is a possibility that must be taken seriously. Unfortunately, with the available data, it is difficult to

entirely rule it out; however, I am able to estimate Equation (1) in a variety of different ways. By

varying the stringency of the assumptions required for each apprach, I can examine how sensitive

the results are to endogeneity concerns.

24The results are qualitatively similar when I include less parsimonious sets of controls.

19
In general, I assume that the unobserved information is a composite term, i.e., uit = μi + it,

where μi represents time-invariant station-specific heterogeneity and it is the idiosyncratic error.

Depending on μ’s correlation with the explanatory variables and the dependent variable, Equation

3 should be estimated in different ways.

First, I make the strong assumption that the station-specific heterogeneity is uncorrelated with

the other explanatory variables. This implies that I can estimate equation (3) using ordinary least

squares (OLS), accounting for the possible correlations over time at the station-level by clustering or

the use of random effects (RE). Insofar as clustering allows for more general correlation structures

than RE, it is a more conservative approach.

When the assumption of independence between the unobserved and observed factors does not

hold, the cross-sectional estimates suffer from omitted variable bias. Therefore, in my second approach to identification, I include the station-level means of the time-varying regressors to capture

the correlation between μ and the observables. This approach stems from Mundlak (1978), who

noted that the results from standard linear fixed effects (FE) models can be obtained in a RE model

if the means of time-varying regressors are included. Thus, my second approach involves assuming

that:

μi = X ̄

iξ + υi

, (2)

where X ̄

i

is the vector of station-level means of time-varying regressors, and υi represents time

invariant station information that is uncorrelated with the observables.

Unfortunately, few elements in my data exhibit much variation over time as station characteristics are largely fixed. For this reason, along with the means of population, income, and number

of stations (affiliated and not) in the zipcode, I include the mean lagged volume of sales, and the

mean of lagged price of regular unleaded. In addition, I include the one-period lagged terms directly in the Mundlak models. The lagged terms can reasonably be thought to be exogenous (or

20
at least predetermined) at the time the decision-maker chooses forms. While including the lagged

terms (and their means) helps control for unobserved heterogeneity, it requires that all stations in

MN, OH, and CO are dropped since only one year of data is available for those areas. As with

the cross-sectional models, I assume that correlations introduced by the remaining unobservable

station-specific heterogeneity can be addressed by clustering the standard errors at the station level.

My results are qualitatively robust to the exclusion of the lagged terms.

Third, both of the previous approaches implicitly assume that the refiners can update their contract choices each year. This assumption is quite strong insofar as Blair and Lafontaine (2005) state

that franchising contracts are usually many years long. Therefore, I relax the implicit assumption

and utilize only the first observation in the data for each station. When taking this approach, I

utilize the entire pool of stations in the sample and do not include the Mundlak controls.

Finally, it is worth considering what it would mean if the approaches described above failed to

appropriately control for the possible interrelatedness of choices and unobservables. Suppose there

were shocks that increased the expected profits from locating multiple stations in a given zipcode.

In order to produce systematically biased results, these shocks would have to be correlated with

the payoffs to choosing different contracts. To a large extent, therefore, I believe controlling for the

share of local outlets organized under vertically separated contracts should capture any systematic

correlation.

I estimate all models as probits, allowing for heteroskedastic standard errors, which are clustered

at the station-level when there are multiple periods of data per station. Coefficients and standard

errors are for numerically calculated marginal effects.

5.2 Empirical Results

Table 5 shows the results of the models of contract choice. Column 1 represents the baseline approach, exploiting observations from all states. Column 2 employs the same estimating approach

but replaces the contemporaneous share of nearby outlets that are separated with its one year

21
Table 5: Market Structure and Form Choice

All All, Lag All, Panel Initial

Probit Probit Probit Probit

mfx/se mfx/se mfx/se mfx/se

Local Presence -0.011** -0.010+ -0.013+ -0.015**

0 0.01 0.01 0.01

Share Separated 0.197*** 0.153** 0.177** 0.287***

0.04 0.07 0.07 0.06

Competitors 0.001 0.004** 0.001 -0.001

0 0 0 0

C-Store 0 0.005 0.022 -0.003

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.02

Service Bays 0.132*** 0.106*** 0.076*** 0.198***

0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02

Nozzles -0.004*** -0.003*** 0 -0.006***

0 0 0 0

Population -0.000* 0 0.001 -0.000***

0 0 0 0

Income 0 0 0.001 0.001

0 0 0 0

Brand Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes

State-Date Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes

Observations 2725 943 898 1588

* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01 in two-sided tests. + p<0.10 in one-sided test.

Estimates are numerically-calculated marginal effects. All standard errors clustered at station-level. Mundlak models include one year lagged volume of sales as

well as station-level means of the number of stations in the zipcode, population,

and income data.

22
lag. Column 3 is the Mundlak model, which increases the degree to which time invariant station

heterogeneity is controlled for. Column 4 uses only the first observation for each station to control

for the possibility that there are frictions impeding the regular updating of form choices.

The results across all four models are similar in the economic and statistical significance of their

estimates. Moreover, they are consistent with the theory of competition-driven moral hazard laid

out above. In all four models, I find that an increase in the number of affiliated outlets in the vicinity

leads to a economically significant lower likelihood of utilizing vertically separated contracts. The

impact is not overwhelmingly large as the estimates imply that the presence of one additional

affiliated outlet reduces the likelihood of vertical separation by 1.1 to 2 percent. However, insofar

as the unconditional likelihood of company-ownership is only 13 percent, the results indicate that

the presence of just one affiliated outlet leads to a 10-15 percent increase in the likelihood that the

form is utilized.

In addition to supporting the idea that competition can lead to incentive conflicts with vertically

separated managers, the Table provides robust evidence in support of the idea that there are scale

monitoring efficiencies. This can be seen in the fact that an increase in the share of outlets in the

surrounding county operated under a vertically separated form leads to an increase in the likelihood

that a specific outlet is also operated at arms length from the principal. Column 2 suggests that

this effect is not driven by possible simultaneity of form choices.

The other explanatory variables have coefficients in broad alignment with past research. In

general, the presence of other competitors has no economically or statistically significant influence

on form choice. There is no influence to having a convenience store on vertical separation. This

finding may reflect the influence of aggregating all of the different vertically separated forms as

Shepard (1993) found this factor to differentially affect the likelihood of different vertically separated

contracts.25 By contrast, the presence of a service bay significantly increases the likelihood that the

refiner uses an arms length arrangement. Broadly consistent with the past literature considering

25The results of the multinomial logit model presented in Table B-4 support this possibility.

23
the effect of outlet size on the boundaries of the firm as surveyed in Lafontaine and Slade (2007),

I find that the number of nozzles has a negative impact on the likelihood of vertical separation.

Finally, I find that neither population nor income is an economically significant factor.

Overall, the results of the form choice models offer strong additional support for the idea that

there is competition-driven moral hazard and that it is an empirically significant factor in this

industry. The data show that refiners vary their utilization of vertically separated contracts to

minimize its likelihood. In addition, as noted above, the key implication regarding the impact of

nearby outlets holds when all contract possibilities are endogenized in a multinomial logit setting.

Moreover, the results also were robust to the inclusion of controls for the relative presence of independents and controlling for brand-state-date heterogeneity. Finally, as might have been expected

given the discussion of possible endogeneity bias above, the results are robust to instrumenting for

the number of affiliated outlets with its one period (station-level) lag.26 Details on all models not

included in the paper are available upon request.

6 Economic Behavior Analysis

6.1 Identification and Inference

The previous section demonstrated that refiners hesitate to employ vertically separated contracts

when there are affiliated present in the zipcode. While consistent with concerns about competitiondriven moral hazard, one might nevertheless wonder if firms were reacting to other incentives.

Alternatively, one might fear that the results were systematically biased as a result of not satisfactorily addressing the simultaneous determination of form and local market structure. To partially

check that this is not leading to inappropriate support for the idea that market structure can

produce moral hazard, this section tests for behavioral differences across vertically separated and

integrated stations in different market structures conditional on the refiners’ choices of contracts.

In order to infer the empirical significance of competition-induced moral hazard on these en26In this regression, however, the monitoring efficiency variable is no longer statistically significant.

24
dogenous variables, I estimate variations on the following linear general form:

Yit = Fitδ + Aitα + F · Aitσ + Nitρ + Xitλ + Ziν + uit, (3)

where i and t again index stations and time of observation, respectively. Y is the economic outcome

of interest (i.e., price or quality), and will be the price of regular, super, and premium gasoline

or the provision of quality as proxied for by a binary station appearance variable. As before, F

indicates whether a given station operates under a vertically separated contract,while A captures

the number of affiliated outlets in the market. F · A the interaction between F and A. Once more,

N represents the sum of all other gasoline stations in the zipcode; Xit are time-varying station

and market characteristics; Zi are time-invariant station characteristics; and uit is information

unobservable to the econometrician.

Equation (3) takes a difference in differences approach to trying to identify the impact of

moral hazard by high-powered agents on station behavior in multi-product markets. The coefficient

of interest is σ, which captures the systematic impact of an additional affiliated station on the

behavior of stations operated under vertically separated contracts relative to vertically integrated

stations in otherwise similarly structured markets. Any direct impact of vertical separation upon

behavior is picked up by δ, while α reveals the direct influence of an additional affiliated outlet on a

station’s behavior, regardless of whether or not it is operated under a vertically separated contract.

As in Vita (2000) and Hosken et al. (2008), I estimate the pricing models in levels; however,

the results are qualitatively identical when I employ a log-linear specification. For the quality of

station appearance regressions, I estimate the likelihood of having high quality using probit models,

reporting the numerically calculated marginal effects of the explanatory variables. In estimating

the pricing models, I exploit only the pooled (with clustering) and Mundlak estimating approaches

insofar as there is no reason to fear that gasoline prices are sticky. However, as noted above, there is

reason to think that appearance quality is likely to be more durable. Therefore, when exploring the

25
relationship between quality, market structure, and vertical separation, I again estimate a model

that uses only the initial observations for each station.

In the price models, I include contemporaneous quality as an explanatory variable. This may

strike some as problematic. However, I believe that it is reasonable to treat quality as predetermined

at the time prices are chosen. Station quality is likely to be labor intensive and relatively durable;

by contrast, prices can be changed rapidly to reflect alterations to supply or demand.

Before turning to the estimation results, I believe it is worth discussing the possibility that

the estimating approaches do not fully address the possibility of endogeneity. After all, I largely

assume that after conditioning on observables – sometime including the Mundlak variables – that

both market structure and contract form can be taken as predetermined. There is no question that

this is a very strong assumption. However, I would argue that there is little reason for concern about

endogeneity falsely driving results consistent with competition-driven moral hazard. Because of the

differences-in-differences approach, this would require shocks positively affecting the desirability of

more stations and the usage of vertically separated contracts, but negatively impacting economic

behavior. It is difficult to identify such shocks’ possible origins in this institutional setting. Indeed,

the most intuitive assumption about shocks that impact the number of outlets and vertical separation would relate to demand-side factors. These would be more likely to lead to upward pressure

on prices and quality. Thus, I believe that finding a negatively signed σ would represent particularly conservative evidence of the impact of competition-driven moral hazard. As discussed further

below, robustness results from instrumental variables exploiting some of the implications of section

5 are consistent with this.

6.2 Empirical Results

6.2.1 Gasoline Prices

Table 6 shows the results of the cross-sectional and Mundlak specifications for regular, super, and

premium unleaded gasoline. Columns 1, 3, and 5 show the results of the pooled cross-sectional

26
Table 6: Form, Market Structure, and Pricing Behavior

Regular Unleaded Super Unleaded Premium Unleaded

OLS Mundlak OLS Mundlak OLS Mundlak

b/se b/se b/se b/se b/se b/se

Separated 0.662* 1.625*** 0.625+ 2.654*** 0.656+ 2.423***

0.34 0.45 0.42 0.63 0.43 0.71

Sep X Local -0.230* -0.272* -0.295* -0.398* -0.328** -0.215

0.13 0.15 0.15 0.22 0.16 0.25

Local Presence 0.172+ 0.102 0.18 0.290+ 0.14 0.165

0.12 0.15 0.14 0.22 0.15 0.25

Competitors -0.078*** -0.071 -0.051*** 0.017 -0.058*** 0.048

0.01 0.07 0.02 0.09 0.02 0.1

C-Store -0.697*** -0.3 0.042 -0.156 -0.402+ -0.243

0.21 0.25 0.29 0.31 0.29 0.37

Service Bays 0.677*** 0.499** 1.070*** 0.571* 1.173*** 0.727**

0.2 0.25 0.27 0.32 0.26 0.34

Appearance -0.295* -0.864*** 0.258 -0.892** -0.107 -0.796*

0.18 0.3 0.22 0.41 0.25 0.48

Population 0 -0.011 0 -0.041 0 0.034

0 0.03 0 0.03 0 0.04

Income 0.098*** 0.025 0.138*** 0.185* 0.156*** 0.061

0.01 0.09 0.01 0.1 0.01 0.11

Brand Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

State-Date Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Observations 4299 1616 4296 1616 4299 1616

* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01 in two-sided tests. + p<0.10 in one-sided test. All standard errors

clustered at station-level. Mundlak models include one year lagged volume of sales as well as station-level

means of lagged volumes, the number of stations in the zipcode, population, and income data.

27
models. Columns 2, 4, and 6 show the results of the Mundlak models when I more extensively

control for unobserved heterogeneity.

The results of the different models are consistent with the theory outlined above. In all six

regressions, the interaction term’s coefficient is negative. Moreover, in five of the models, the coefficient is statistically significant at conventional levels. The negative coefficients indicate that as the

number of nearby affiliated stations increases, vertically separated stations cut their prices more

than vertically integrated outlets. Although the magnitude of the coefficient on the interaction effect appears small – between 0.2 and 0.4 cents per affiliated station – these effects are of non-trivial

economic significance because retail margins in gasoline retailing are very low. Hosken et al. (2008)

and Kleit (2005) report that retail margins average 20 cents or less. Thus, a one standard deviation

in the number of affiliated stations in a zipcode leads to a price change equal to 1-3 percent or

more of the average retail margin. Furthermore, it is worth noting that these results represent conservative estimates of the impact of competition-driven moral hazard insofar as they represent the

net effect of price cutting induced by moral hazard and price-increasing promotional externalities

and/or monitoring effects.

The estimated coefficients for the market structure and vertical contracting variables are also

in line with the past literature. As in Wilson (2011b), I always find that the vertically separated

stations charge higher prices and that these effects are significantly larger and more precisely

estimated when I control for unobserved station-level factors. Consistent with the idea that affiliated

stations are likely to be particularly close substitutes for consumers, making their diversion ratios

especially large, I find that the presence of affiliated stations in and of itself exerts upward pressure

on station pricing. The effect of this term is never statistically significant at conventional levels

in two-sided tests, however. Finally, I intuitively find that the presence of unaffiliated competitors

generally exerts downward pressure on station pricing.

The effects of the other control variables also are all consistent with theory and previous empirical work. The theoretical models presented in Slade (1996) and Wilson (2011b) predict that stations

28
offering products that complement gasoline sales should have lower gasoline prices. This is consistent with the finding that the presence of a convenience store is negatively correlated with gasoline

price. I also find that service capabilities are associated with higher prices, which is consistent with

the findings of Slade (1996). Interestingly, I find that stations with higher quality appearances tend

to have lower prices, which may suggest cost complementarities between the provision of quality

and other desired services. Finally, the results show higher household incomes are associated with

higher prices; however, population’s impact is negligible and inconsistently signed.

Overall, these results offer significant support for the importance of competition-driven moral

hazard. They are consistent with the idea that vertically separated stations engage in tougher

price competition in the presence of affiliated outlets than would vertically integrated stations in

otherwise equivalent situations. Such behavior is in line with the idea that the high-powered local

managers at vertically separated outlets do not internalize the impact of their competitive decisions on overall brand performance. As noted above, the results represent particularly conservative

estimates insofar as they represent net effects, and there may be some demand advantages to using

vertically separated contracts in markets with affiliated outlets.

Furthermore, although not shown here, the price results are robust to a host of alternative

specifications including controling for the relative presence of independent stations, adding brandspecific state-year dummies to reduce concern that the results are driven by brand-specific variation

across geographic areas, and using non-linear logarithmic formulations of the market structure

variables as in Berry (1992). Moreover, the price regression results are qualitatively robust to

instrumenting for the choice of vertical contract and the interaction term with the share of affiliates

in the county that are operated under vertically separated forms, the number of gasoline nozzles

at the station, and the one year lag of affiliated stations in the zipcode. However, it must be noted

that while instrumenting leads to coefficients of the same signs but significantly larger magnitudes

(as in Wilson (2011b)) as the OLS and Mundlak models, the results are not precisely identified.

This is not surprising given the high degree of correlation between the endogenous variables and

29
the dramatic reduction in the sample size that instrumenting with lags leads to. Consistent with

such problems, F tests of the explanatory power of the instruments in the first stage are somewhat

marginal, and C tests of the exogeneity of the instruments cannot reject their endogeneity. Because

of these things, I do not place great weight on the IV point estimates and do not report them here.

6.2.2 Quality of Station Appearance

Table 7 shows the results of models of the determinants of high quality station appearances. Column

1 uses observations from all states, while Column 2 represents the discrete choice analogue to the

linear Mundlak models estimated for prices. Finally, Column 3 uses only the first observation for

each station to control for the possibility that appearance is “sticky” in some way. If this were the

case, it would be inappropriate to treat multiple observations for a station as equivalent.

As with the price models, the estimation results are generally consistent with the theory outlined

above, and are qualitatively similar across models and data samples. In all three models, the

interaction term is negative as predicted. However, the term is only statistically significant in the

first and third models. Moreover, the economic magnitude of the coefficient on the interaction term

is also markedly larger in these models. Indeed, for almost all of the explanatory variables, the

Mundlak model recovers coefficients that are statistically and economically less significant than in

the other models. These findings may reflect the comparative stickiness of the appearance variable,

particularly given the very short panel. Hence, appearance is likely to be correlated with the time

invariant station-level heterogeneity that is partially controlled for with lags and time-varying

means in the Mundlak model. Therefore, I place greater emphasis on the estimates from Columns

1 and 3, which imply that each additional affiliated outlet in a local market reduces the likelihood

that a vertically separated station has a high quality appearance by 2 or 3 percent. While not

enormous, such effects represent a shift of 16-20 percent relative to the unconditional likelihood

that a vertically separated outlet has a high quality appearance.

In addition, I find results generally in line with the prior literature for the other form and

30
Table 7: Form, Market Structure, and Product Quality

Full Mundlak Initial

Probit Probit Probit

mfx/se mfx/se mfx/se

Separated -0.114*** -0.026 -0.137***

0.03 0.03 0.04

Sep X Local -0.018** -0.008 -0.032***

0.01 0.01 0.01

Local Presence 0.002 -0.007 0.006

0.01 0.01 0.01

Competitors 0.002** -0.005 0.002*

0 0 0

C-Store -0.011 0.02 -0.029+

0.02 0.02 0.02

Service Bays -0.181*** -0.129*** -0.183***

0.01 0.02 0.02

Population 0.000** 0.001 0.000*

0 0 0

Income 0.001 -0.004 -0.001

0 0.01 0

Brand Effects Yes Yes Yes

State-Date Effects Yes Yes Yes

Observations 4015 1247 2474

* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01 in two-sided tests. + p<0.10

in one-sided test. Estimates are the marginal effects. All standard errors clustered at station-level. Mundlak models include

one year lagged volume of sales and one year lag of the price of

regular unleaded as well as station-level means of lagged volumes,

lagged prices, the number of stations in the zipcode, population,

and income data.

31
market structure variables. Vertical separation is associated with lower likelihood of a high quality

appearance, which is consistent with the simple comparisons of means shown above. In addition, the

presence of competitors appears to put upward pressure on the provision of quality though this effect

is of small magnitude. This result is supportive of the idea that stations attract customers in part

by offering them a more pleasing experience than competitors. By contrast, there is no economically

or statistically significant separate effect for the additional presence of affiliated outlets.

The coefficients on the other controls also are broadly intuitive. The presence of both convenience

stores and service bays reduces the likelihood that a station has a high quality appearance. This

is consistent with the necessity of allocating finite effort across a variety of tasks. If revenues are

generated from two separate activities for which demand is inversely correlated, then the incentive

to devote resources to an activity that only benefits one of them is reduced, especially if it is lower

margin. This may explain why service bays have a larger and more statistically significant effect

(Slade, 1996). Population and income have economically insignificant impacts.

Overall, the findings for the connection between local market structure, vertical separation,

and the provision of quality offer significant additional support for the empirical relevance of

competition-driven moral hazard. As before, these results were robust to controlling for the relative presence of independent competitors and the possibility of brand-state-date heterogeneity. In

addition, as noted above in footnote 15, robustness checks exploiting the full range of quality grades

returned qualitatively similar results when estimated as ordered probit models.

7 Conclusion

This article advances the idea that market structure differentially influences the strategic incentives

of outlets operated under different types of vertical contracts. As a result, market structure should

also influence the choice of contractual form. Investigating the empirical importance of these factors

in the context of the retail gasoline industry, I find that gasoline stations operated under vertically

separated contracts charge lower prices, while neglecting to maintain high quality appearances,

32
when they are in the presence of affiliated stations than do vertically integrated stations. Consistent

with this, I show that the refiners are more likely to employ vertically separated contracts in areas

where such moral hazard problems are less likely to arise. All of these findings support the idea

that vertical separation can lead to incentive conflicts between agent and principal in multi-product

markets.

Overall, the paper shows how factors like market structure and a menu of products, which

industrial economists are increasingly focusing on in other areas, can be incorporated into principalagent settings. In addition, my results are relevant to practitioners and policy-makers interested

in retail gasoline markets. This is because several vertically integrated refiners (e.g., Exxon) have

indicated a desire to stop having company-owned and operated stations (MSNBC, 2008). This paper

suggests that their decisions will have an influence on product market conditions. In particular,

ceteris paribus, it suggests that, at least in the short run, prices will fall, but so too will station

quality, making overall welfare effects ambiguous. I hope to investigate these issues further in

subsequent research.

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35
Appendix A: New Image Data Description

Below, I provide the name and description provided by New Image of those variables used in the analysis

and the method by which they were transformed (if appropriate).

• Organizational Form: Categorical variable corresponding to the answer to the following question.

TYPE OF OPERATION)(TOO) - Overall status of operation, ask respondent to identify:

0) - No building or doesn’t sell gasoline

1) - Lessee dealer building and facility owned by major/non major oil company, business owned by

dealer. [I reordered this as Type 2.]

2) - Salary operation building and facility owned by major/non major oil company. Personnel paid

by company. [I reordered this as Type 1, so that salaried operations represented the baseline.]

3) - Open Dealer - Land and operation owned by individual who is supplied product by major/non

major oil company.

4) - Jobber/Wholesaler Operation owned by a local company that owns several operations in the

area. (EXP distributor) or a franchise/chain organization (EXP a convenience store chain)

• Regular Unleaded Price: Numerical variable corresponding to non-constrained answer to the following

question. OCT REGULAR UNLEADED)(UO) - Price Reg Unleaded)(RUP)

• Super Unleaded Price: Numerical variable corresponding to non-constrained answer to the following

question. OCT MIDGRADE UNLEADED)(MO) - Price mid Unleaded)(MUP)

• Premium Unleaded Price: Numerical variable corresponding to non-constrained answer to the following

question. OCT SUPER)(SO) - Price Super Unleaded)(PUP)

• Volume: Numerical variable corresponding to non-constrained answer to the following question. MONTHLY

VOLUME)(GV) - Enter average number of gallons sold in one month. (last completed month)

• C-Store: Dummy variable which takes value of 1 if an answer other than 0 chosen for the following

question. INTERIOR C-STORE APPEARANCE)(INAP) As it appears to consumer.

0) - No snack shop

1) - Outstanding (top 10 percent)

2) - Excellent

3) - Better than average

4) - Equal to average

5) - Below average

6) - Poor

7) - Unacceptable (bottom 10 percent)

• Service Bays: Dummy variable which takes value of 1 if a number other than 0 chosen for the following

question. SERVICE BAYS)(NOSB) - Total number of service bays. If not in operation mention in

comments.

• Appearance: Dummy variable which takes value of 1 if the answer to the following question takes the

value of 1 or 2. APPEARANCE OF BUILDING)(AOB) -

0) - N/A

1) - Outstanding (top 10 percent)

2) - Excellent

3) - Better than average

4) - Equal to average

5) - Below average

6) - poor

7) - Unacceptable (bottom 10percent)

• Nozzles: Numerical variable corresponding to non-constrained answer to the following question. GASOLINE NOZZLES)(GN) - Total number of gasoline only nozzles. Do not include diesel or kerosene.

36
Appendix B: Additional Tables

Table B-1: Contract Variation Across States

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Total

CO 0 0 0 630 0 630

0 0 0 100 0 100

DC 0 117 0 109 0 226

0 51.77 0 48.23 0 100

KY 239 237 0 244 0 720

33.19 32.92 0 33.89 0 100

MD 0 437 0 444 0 881

0 49.6 0 50.4 0 100

MN 0 0 0 600 0 600

0 0 0 100 0 100

OH 0 0 0 0 185 185

0 0 0 0 100 100

VA 0 478 482 485 0 1,445

0 33.08 33.36 33.56 0 100

Total 239 1,269 482 2,512 185 4,687

5.1 27.07 10.28 53.6 3.95 100

Rows in italics represent percentages.

37
Table B-2: Station-Period Observations by State and Form

State Company Owned Lessee Dealer Open Dealer Jobber Total

CO 290 57 99 184 630

46.03 9.05 15.71 29.21 100

DC 0 154 43 2 199

0 77.39 21.61 1.01 100

KY 49 74 233 364 720

6.81 10.28 32.36 50.56 100

MD 14 619 157 44 834

1.68 74.22 18.82 5.28 100

MN 57 95 198 250 600

9.5 15.83 33 41.67 100

OH 70 15 45 55 185

37.84 8.11 24.32 29.73 100

VA 191 749 307 120 1,367

13.97 54.79 22.46 8.78 100

Total 671 1,763 1,082 1,019 4,535

14.8 38.88 23.86 22.47 100

Rows in italics represent percentages.

38
Table B-3: Multiple Contract Behavioral Regressions

Regular Unleaded Quality

OLS Mundlak Probit Mundlak

b/se b/se mfx/se mfx/se

Lessee 0.861** 1.454*** -0.075*** -0.024

0.35 0.42 0.02 0.03

Lessee X Local -0.238* -0.229+ -0.020** -0.008

0.14 0.16 0.01 0.01

Open 0.901** 1.554*** -0.116*** 0.019

0.43 0.52 0.02 0.04

Open X Local -0.1 -0.347* -0.011 -0.018

0.19 0.2 0.01 0.02

Jobber 0.033 0.948+ -0.074*** -0.042*

0.4 0.64 0.02 0.02

Jobber X Local -0.214+ -0.177 -0.021** 0.007

0.16 0.2 0.01 0.02

Local Presence 0.154 0.078 0.002 -0.006

0.12 0.15 0.01 0.01

Competitors -0.080*** -0.066 0.002** -0.006+

0.01 0.07 0 0

Nozzles 0.001+ -0.003***

0 0

C-Store -0.634*** -0.342+ -0.019 0.021+

0.2 0.25 0.02 0.01

Service Bays 0.429** 0.405+ -0.175*** -0.132***

0.21 0.27 0.01 0.02

Population 0 -0.02 0.000* 0.001

0 0.03 0 0

Income 0.099*** 0.028 0.001 -0.005

0.01 0.09 0 0.01

Brand Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes

State-Date Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes

Observations 4298 1615 4015 1247

* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01 in two-sided tests. + p<0.10 in one-sided test.

Probit estimates are numerically calculated marginal effects. All standard errors

clustered at station-level. Mundlak price model contains lagged volume and mean

number of outlets, lagged volume, income, and population. Mundlak quality model

contains lagged volume and price as well as mean number of outlets, lagged volume,

lagged price, income, and population.

39
Table B-4: Multinomial Logit Model of Contract Choice

Lessee Open Jobber

b/se b/se b/se

Local Presence -0.114 -0.161+ -0.122

0.09 0.1 0.11

Share Separated 1.743** 2.580*** 4.661***

0.77 0.76 0.84

Competitors 0.032* 0.01 0.007

0.02 0.02 0.02

C-Store 0.089 -0.650** 0.217

0.23 0.26 0.32

Service Bays 1.977*** 2.518*** 0.3

0.27 0.29 0.32

Nozzles -0.021+ -0.125*** -0.063***

0.01 0.02 0.01

Population 0 -0.001** -0.002***

0 0 0

Income -0.004 -0.009 0.01

0.01 0.01 0.01

Brand Effects Yes

State Effects Yes

Year Effects Yes

Observations 3113

* p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01 in two-sided tests. + p<0.10

in one-sided test. Regression utilizes all observations from all

states; convergence problems occurred when state-date effects

were employed. Standard errors clustered at station-level.

40