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This paper studies equilibrium selection in the retail gasoline industry. We exploit a unique dataset that contains the universe of station-level prices for an urban market for 15 years, and that encompasses a coordinated equilibrium transition mid-sample. We uncover a gradual, three-year equilibrium transition, whereby dominant firms use price leadership and price experiments to create focal points that coordinate market prices, soften price competition, and enhance retail margins. Our results inform the theory of collusion, with particular relevance to the initiation of collusion and equilibrium selection. We also highlight new insights into merger policy and collusion detection strategies. (JEL G34, L12, L13, L71, L81, Q35)

We document how imperfect information generates heterogeneous effects in information treatments with personalized high-frequency feedback and peer comparisons. In our field experiment in retail electricity, we find that high and low energy users symmetrically underestimate and overestimate their relative energy use pre-treatment. Responses to personalized feedback, however, are asymmetric. Households that overestimate their relative use and low users both respond by consuming more. These boomerang effects provide evidence that peer-comparison information programs, even those coupled with normative comparisons, are not guaranteed to lead to increases in prosocial behavior.

115 1. See Eckert (2013) and Noel (2011) for extensive reviews of the academic literature on retail gasoline pricing and cycles. A number of policy studies from the U.S., Canada, and Australia have also studied price cycles. See, for example, Federal Trade Commission (2011), Government of Canada (2003), and Australia Consumer & Competition Commission (2007).

The Ellice Hills map area (NTS 56 P), southwest of Committee Bay, contains two belts of Archean supracrustal rocks intruded by younger, diverse plutonic rocks. The Ellice Hills supracrustal strand is a west-northwest-facing belt of interbedded psammite, semipelite, silicate iron-formation, komatiite, and basalt. To the south, the Committee Bay supracrustal belt contains komatiite, semipelite, psammite, and iron-formation, overlain by quartzite, rare intermediate volcanic rocks, and interbedded psammite and semipelite. Ultramafic sills intrude the supracrustal rocks. Folded with the Archean supracrustal rocks is a small outlier of younger meta-arkose and calc-arenite. A regionally extensive, northeast-striking, 2610 Ma intrusive complex of K-feldspar-magnetite granodiorite and monzogranite intrudes supracrustal rocks in the south. To the north, the supracrustal belts are cut by tonalite, granodiorite, monzogranite, and diorite plutons that are likely part of a widespread, 2610-2580 Ma plutonic suite. The northern part of the Ellice Hills area is intruded by a large biotite-muscovite monzogranite pluton.