Effects of antitrust prosecution on retail fuel prices

González, Xulia; Moral, María J.

doi:10.1016/j.ijindorg.2019.102537

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…There are increasing voices claiming, that cartel fines may not be sufficient to deter future cartels (Bigoni et al, 2012;Allain et al, 2015;or Smuda, 2013). Moreover, González and Moral (2019) find evidence in the Spanish retail petrol market that cartel fines are followed by increased prices, with potential explanation that penalised firms pass on the fine to consumers. there is debate on whether cartel fines are sufficient to deter cartels.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Fines and reputational sanctions: The case of cartels

Mariuzzo

Ormosi

Majied³

2020

International Journal of Industrial Organization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Fines and reputational sanctions: The case of cartels

Mariuzzo

Ormosi

Majied³

2020

International Journal of Industrial Organization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…We exclude from our data set those gas stations that operate on the Canary and Balearic Islands, as well as gas cooperatives and other stations that do not sell to the public. The data was collected before midnight, if any station changes the price more than once in a given day, the price collected would be the last price of the day (see González and Moral [2] for more details).…”

Section: Experimental Design Materials and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Panel data to investigate pricing behavior in the Spanish retail fuel market

González

Moral

2020

Data in Brief

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The data described in this article were collected daily over the period 18 August 2014 to 15 June 2015 from the website of the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism http://geoportalgasolineras.es. The database includes information on almost all gas stations located in Spain that sell to the public. For each gas station we have information of daily diesel prices (both posted price and net of taxes), brands and locations (latitude and longitude) and the Brent price. We also share a Stata program file to identify the nearest competitors of each gas station and their brand. The program also computes the distance to the nearest refinery and its brand. The data base can be used for analyzing firms pricing behavior focusing, for example, on asymmetric pricing, cartels or vertical integration, among other topics. This data base is used in the paper [2] “Effects of antitrust prosecution on retail fuel prices” that analyze the impact on prices of an antitrust sanction imposed to several brands on February 2015.

show abstract

“…It follows that the Spanish Competition Authority should pay attention to Cepsa, even when it does not exceed the 30% market threshold, because it is responsible for welfare-reducing through decreased competition. This firm's behavior could include hidden collusive practices, a plausible account given that Repsol, Cepsa and three other minor operators were sanctioned in February 2015 for maintaining collusive agreements that softened competition between their respective gas stations (González and Moral, 2019).…”

Section: Friendly Competitorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competition and Competitors: Evidence from the Retail Fuel Market

González¹,

Moral²

2023

The Energy Journal

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Policy makers and antitrust authorities are concerned about the lack of competition in the fuel retail market and its impact on consumer prices. The aim of this article is to empirically evaluate the role of the intensity of competition and competitors' brand affiliation on retail fuel prices. To this end, we use a panel data set with detailed daily on nearly 8,500 gas stations and 2 million price observations; we estimate a reduced-form fuel price equation that accounts for supply (input costs and local competition) and demand shifters (income, traffic intensity, and location) as well as for brand and time fixed effects. We use an instrumental variable estimation strategy, to account for the endogeneity of the intensity of competition. Our results show that premium brands and low-cost brands affect the prices of rival firms in an opposite way. On the one hand, premium brands soften competition in the local markets where they operate and thereby allow their rivals to set higher prices. Besides, price setting by premium-brand stations react differently depending on whether the nearest rival sells the same brand (a friendly competitor) or some other brand. By contrast, low-cost brands contribute to reducing prices through their own prices (direct effect), thereby encouraging competitors to lower their prices (indirect effect). Our results suggest that regulation limiting the entry of premium operators whilst promoting the entry of low cost gas stations will enhance competition at the retail level.

show abstract

Effects of antitrust prosecution on retail fuel prices

Cited by 8 publications

References 47 publications

Fines and reputational sanctions: The case of cartels

Fines and reputational sanctions: The case of cartels

Panel data to investigate pricing behavior in the Spanish retail fuel market

Competition and Competitors: Evidence from the Retail Fuel Market

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About