[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/dicedp/47.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Gasoline Price Regulations: Experimental Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Haucap, Justus
  • Müller, Hans Christian
Abstract
Economic theory suggests that gasoline retail markets are prone to collusive behavior. Oligopoly market structures prevail, market interactions occur frequently, prices are highly transparent, and demand is rather inelastic. A recent sector inquiry in Germany backed suspicions of tacit collusion and suggested to adopt regulatory pricing rules for gas stations similar to those implemented in Austria, parts of Australia, Luxembourg or parts of Canada. In order to increase consumer welfare these rules either restrict the number of price changes per day or they limit the mark‐up for gasoline retail prices. As theoretical predictions about the impact of these measures are mixed and empirical studies rare, we analyze the effects, using an experimental gasoline market in the lab. Our results reveal that two of the suggested rules rather decrease consumer welfare: The Austrian rule which only allows one price increase per day (while price cuts are always possible) and the Luxembourg rule which introduces a maximum markup for retailers. While no rule tends to induce lower retail prices, the Western Australian rule which allows at most one daily price change (no matter whether up or down) does at least not harm consumers.

Suggested Citation

  • Haucap, Justus & Müller, Hans Christian, 2012. "The Effects of Gasoline Price Regulations: Experimental Evidence," DICE Discussion Papers 47, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:dicedp:47
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/56464/1/047_Haucap_Mueller.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deck, Cary A. & Wilson, Bart J., 2008. "Experimental gasoline markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 134-149, July.
    2. Siegfried Berninghaus & Michael Hesch & Andreas Hildenbrand, 2012. "Zur Wirkung regulatorischer Preiseingriffe auf dem Tankstellenmarkt," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 92(1), pages 46-50, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hakan Yilmazkuday, 2017. "Geographical dispersion of consumer search behaviour," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(57), pages 5740-5752, December.
    2. Ralf Dewenter & Ulrich Heimeshoff & Hendrik Lüth, 2017. "Less Pain at the Pump? The Effects of Regulatory Interventions in Retail Gasoline Markets," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot GmbH, Berlin, vol. 63(3), pages 259-274.
    3. Becker, Maike & Pfeifer, Gregor & Schweikert, Karsten, 2021. "Price Effects of the Austrian Fuel Price Fixing Act: A Synthetic Control Study," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    4. Srikant Devaraj & Pankaj C Patel, 2016. "Gas Prices and Red light Violations in Chicago," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(3), pages 1844-1853.
    5. Obradovits, Martin, 2014. "Austrian-style gasoline price regulation: How it may backfire," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 33-45.
    6. Thomas Wein, 2014. "Preventing Margin Squeeze: An Unsolvable Puzzle for Competition Policy? The Case of the German Gasoline Market," Working Paper Series in Economics 309, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    7. Wittmann, Nadine, 2014. "Regulating gasoline retail markets: The case of Germany," Economics Discussion Papers 2014-17, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    8. Angerer, Martin, 2020. "Regulation of retail gasoline prices," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).
    9. Wittmann, Nadine, 2014. "Regulating gasoline retail markets: The case of Germany," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 8, pages 1-33.
    10. Fasoula, Evanthia & Schweikert, Karsten, 2018. "Price regulations and price adjustment dynamics: Evidence from the Austrian retail fuel market," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 08-2018, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    11. Noel, Michael D. & Chu, Lanlan, 2015. "Forecasting gasoline prices in the presence of Edgeworth Price Cycles," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 204-214.
    12. Justus Haucap & Willi Diez & Hans-Joachim Otto & Heinz-J. Bontrup, 2012. "Steigende Benzinpreise: Fehlende Transparenz auf dem Öl- und Kraftstoffmarkt?," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 65(11), pages 03-15, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Castilla, Carolina & Haab, Timothy C., 2010. "Asymmetric Search and Loss Aversion: Choice Experiment on Consumer Willingness to Search in the Gasoline Retail Market," 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado 61672, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Wittmann, Nadine, 2014. "Regulating gasoline retail markets: The case of Germany," Economics Discussion Papers 2014-17, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Kyle Hampton & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2012. "Demand shocks, capacity coordination, and industry performance: lessons from an economic laboratory," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(1), pages 139-166, March.
    4. Bulutay, Muhammed & Hales, David & Julius, Patrick & Tasch, Weiwei, 2021. "Imperfect tacit collusion and asymmetric price transmission," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 584-599.
    5. Mikhael Shor, 2008. "An experiment on strategic capacity reduction," Working papers 2012-22, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    6. van Damme, E.E.C. & Larouche, P. & Müller, W., 2006. "Abuse of a Dominant Position : Cases and Experiments," Other publications TiSEM 7e471876-96e7-46c7-a956-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. Douglas D. Davis & Oleg Korenok, 2009. "Posted Offer Markets In Near‐Continuous Time: An Experimental Investigation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(3), pages 449-466, July.
    8. Becker, Maike & Pfeifer, Gregor & Schweikert, Karsten, 2021. "Price Effects of the Austrian Fuel Price Fixing Act: A Synthetic Control Study," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    9. Ralf Dewenter & Ulrich Heimeshoff & Hendrik Lüth, 2017. "Less Pain at the Pump? The Effects of Regulatory Interventions in Retail Gasoline Markets," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot GmbH, Berlin, vol. 63(3), pages 259-274.
    10. Cary Deck & Bart J. Wilson, 2020. "Auctions in near-continuous time," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(1), pages 110-126, March.
    11. Hans‐Theo Normann & Roberto Ricciuti, 2009. "Laboratory Experiments For Economic Policy Making," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 407-432, July.
    12. Fasoula, Evanthia & Schweikert, Karsten, 2018. "Price regulations and price adjustment dynamics: Evidence from the Austrian retail fuel market," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 08-2018, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    13. Angerer, Martin, 2020. "Regulation of retail gasoline prices," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).
    14. Amy Schultheis & Daniel N.K. Johnson & Kristina M. Lybecker & Devin Nadar, 2016. "Buy Here, or Keep Driving? The Effect of Geographic Market Density on Retail Gas Prices," Journal of Business, LAR Center Press, vol. 1(1), pages 12-20, March.
    15. Douglas Davis & Oleg Korenok & Robert Reilly, 2009. "Re-matching, information and sequencing effects in posted offer markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(1), pages 65-86, March.
    16. John Aloysius & Cary Deck & Amy Farmer, 2012. "A Comparison of Bundling and Sequential Pricing in Competitive Markets: Experimental Evidence," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 25-51, February.
    17. Deck, Cary & Gu, Jingping, 2012. "Price increasing competition? Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 730-740.
    18. Chang, Kai & Zhang, Chao, 2018. "Asymmetric dependence structure between emissions allowances and wholesale diesel/gasoline prices in emerging China's emissions trading scheme pilots," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 124-136.
    19. Polemis, Michael L. & Fotis, Panagiotis N., 2014. "The taxation effect on gasoline price asymmetry nexus: Evidence from both sides of the Atlantic," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 225-233.
    20. Kephart, Curtis & Munro, David, 2023. "Market concentration and the responsiveness of prices and mark-ups," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 104(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gasoline Prices; Fuel Prices; Experimental Gasoline Market; Fuel Price Regulation; Retail Price Regulation; Gas Stations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L71 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction - - - Mining, Extraction, and Refining: Hydrocarbon Fuels
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
    • L88 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Government Policy
    • K23 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Regulated Industries and Administrative Law
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:dicedp:47. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diduede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.