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The Dynamics of Gasoline Prices: Evidence from Daily French Micro Data

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  • ERWAN GAUTIER
  • RONAN LE SAOUT

Abstract

Using millions of individual gasoline prices collected at a daily frequency, we examine the speed at which market prices of refined oil are transmitted to retail gasoline prices in France. For that, we estimate a reduced‐form model of state‐dependent pricing where thresholds triggering price changes are allowed to vary over time and depend on the duration since the last price change. We find that the degree of pass‐through of wholesale prices to retail gasoline prices is on average 0.77 for diesel and 0.67 for petrol and depend on local market characteristics. The duration for a shock to be fully transmitted into prices is about 10 days. There is no significant asymmetry in the transmission of wholesale price to retail prices. Finally, the duration since the last price change has a significant effect on thresholds triggering price changes but a large variance of idiosyncratic shocks on thresholds is also crucial to replicate the size distribution of price changes.

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  • Erwan Gautier & Ronan Le Saout, 2015. "The Dynamics of Gasoline Prices: Evidence from Daily French Micro Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(6), pages 1063-1089, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jmoncb:v:47:y:2015:i:6:p:1063-1089
    DOI: 10.1111/jmcb.12237
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    3. Charlot, Philippe & Marimoutou, Vêlayoudom, 2014. "On the relationship between the prices of oil and the precious metals: Revisiting with a multivariate regime-switching decision tree," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 456-467.
    4. Lippi, Francesco & Alvarez, Fernando & Ferrara, Andrea & Gautier, Erwan & Le Bihan, Hervé, 2021. "Empirical Investigation of a Sufficient Statistic for Monetary Shocks," CEPR Discussion Papers 16626, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Bragoudakis, Zacharias & Degiannakis, Stavros & Filis, George, 2020. "Oil and pump prices: Testing their asymmetric relationship in a robust way," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    6. Matthew Chesnes, 2016. "Asymmetric Pass-Through in U.S. Gasoline Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    7. Erwan Gautier & Magali Marx & Paul Vertier, 2023. "How Do Gasoline Prices Respond to a Cost Shock?," Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(4), pages 707-741.
    8. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi & Aleksei Oskolkov, 2020. "The Macroeconomics of Sticky Prices with Generalized Hazard Functions," EIEF Working Papers Series 2017, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Jun 2020.
    9. Zacharias Bragoudakis & Stavros Degiannakis & George Filis, 2019. "Oil and pump prices: is there any asymmetry in the Greek oil downstream sector?," Working Papers 268, Bank of Greece.
    10. Taner SEKMEN & Seher Gülşah TOPUZ, 2021. "Asymmetric Oil Price and Exchange Rate Pass-Through in the Turkish Oil-Gasoline Markets," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(2), pages 74-93, June.
    11. Nicoletta Berardi & Erwan Gautier & Hervé Le Bihan, 2015. "More Facts about Prices: France Before and During the Great Recession," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(8), pages 1465-1502, December.
    12. Nicoletta Berardi & Erwan Gautier & Hervé Le Bihan, 2013. "Les ajustements individuels de prix à la consommation en France : de nouveaux résultats sur la période 2003-2011," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 460(1), pages 5-35.
    13. Cárdenas, Jeisson & Gutiérrez, Luis H. & Otero, Jesús, 2017. "Investigating diesel market integration in France: Evidence from micro data," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 314-321.
    14. Erwan Gautier & Ronan Le Saout, 2015. "L'ajustement microéconomique des prix des carburants en France," Working Papers hal-01195759, HAL.
    15. Boroumand, Raphaël Homayoun & Porcher, Thomas & Urom, Christian, 2021. "Negative oil price shocks transmission: The comparative effects of the GFC, shale oil boom, and Covid-19 downturn on French gasoline prices," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    16. González, Xulia & Moral, María J., 2019. "Effects of antitrust prosecution on retail fuel prices," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    17. Qin, Xiao & Zhou, Chunyang & Wu, Chongfeng, 2016. "Revisiting asymmetric price transmission in the U.S. oil-gasoline markets: A multiple threshold error-correction analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 583-591.
    18. Boroumand, Raphaël Homayoun & Goutte, Stéphane & Porcher, Simon & Porcher, Thomas, 2016. "Asymmetric evidence of gasoline price responses in France: A Markov-switching approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 467-476.
    19. David Vincent, 2019. "Estimating (S,s) rule-regression models," London Stata Conference 2019 03, Stata Users Group.
    20. Mats Petter Kahl, 2023. "Was the German fuel discount passed on to consumers?," Working Paper Series in Economics 419, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    21. Sylvain Benoît & Yannick Lucotte & Sébastien Ringuedé, 2019. "Competition and price stickiness: Evidence from the French retail gasoline market," Working Papers hal-02292332, HAL.
    22. Deltas, George & Polemis, Michael, 2020. "Estimating retail gasoline price dynamics: The effects of sample characteristics and research design," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

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