IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/7435.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Choice of Organizational Form in Gasoline Retailing and The Costs of Laws Limiting that Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Asher Blass
  • Dennis W. Carlton

Abstract

This paper uses a new data source to analyze the choice of organizational form of retail gasoline stations. In recent years, gasoline stations have tended to be less likely to be owned and operated by a lessee dealer and more likely to be owned and operated by the refiner. Critics have alleged that company-operated stations are used to drive lessee dealer stations out of business in order to restrict competition. We examine the determinants of organizational form and find them to be based on efficiency not predatory concerns. We estimate the costs of recent laws prohibiting company ownership of gasoline stations.

Suggested Citation

  • Asher Blass & Dennis W. Carlton, 1999. "The Choice of Organizational Form in Gasoline Retailing and The Costs of Laws Limiting that Choice," NBER Working Papers 7435, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7435
    Note: IO
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7435.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barron, John M & Umbeck, John R, 1984. "The Effects of Different Contractual Arrangements: The Case of Retail Gasoline Markets," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(2), pages 313-328, October.
    2. Andrea Shepard, 1993. "Contractual Form, Retail Price, and Asset Characteristics in Gasoline Retailing," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(1), pages 58-77, Spring.
    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. Zava Aydemir & Stefan Buehler, 2002. "Estimating Vertical Foreclosure in U.S. Gasoline Supply," SOI - Working Papers 0212, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
    2. Chouinard Hayley H & Perloff Jeffrey M, 2007. "Gasoline Price Differences: Taxes, Pollution Regulations, Mergers, Market Power, and Market Conditions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-28, January.
    3. U, Peter Lee, 2000. "Competition Policy in the Philippine Downstream Oil Industry," Discussion Papers PASCN DP 2000-14, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
    4. Brickley, James A, 1999. "Incentive Conflicts and Contractual Restraints: Evidence from Franchising," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 745-774, October.
    5. Juan Luis Jiménez & Jordi Perdiguero, 2018. "Mergers and difference-in-difference estimator: Why firms do not increase prices?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 285-311, April.
    6. Bello, Alejandro & Cavero, Sandra, 2008. "The Spanish retail petroleum market: New patterns of competition since the liberalization of the industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 612-626, February.
    7. Jordi Perdiguero, 2011. "Vertical relations and local competition: an empirical approach," IREA Working Papers 201124, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Dec 2011.

    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. U, Peter Lee, 2000. "Competition Policy in the Philippine Downstream Oil Industry," Discussion Papers PASCN DP 2000-14, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
    2. Simshauser, P., 2020. "Merchant utilities and boundaries of the firm: vertical integration in energy-only markets," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2039, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    3. Benjamin Atkinson & Andrew Eckert & Douglas S. West, 2009. "Price Matching And The Domino Effect In A Retail Gasoline Market," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(3), pages 568-588, July.
    4. Lafontaine, Francine, 1999. "Franchising versus corporate ownership: The effect on price dispersion," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 17-34, January.
    5. Arturs Kalnins, 2017. "Pricing Variation Within Dual-Distribution Chains: The Different Implications of Externalities and Signaling for High- and Low-Quality Brands," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(1), pages 139-152, January.
    6. Vázquez-Suárez, Luis & Mejía-Vásquez, Pericles Ramón & Serafim da Silva, Sheila & Sánchez-Gómez, Roberto, 2022. "Gender’s moderating role in the relationship between organisational form and performance in the Spanish supermarket industry," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    7. Simshauser, Paul & Tian, Yuan & Whish-Wilson, Patrick, 2015. "Vertical integration in energy-only electricity markets," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 35-56.
    8. Howard Beales, J. III & Muris, Timothy J., 1995. "The foundations of franchise regulation: Issues and evidence," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 2(1-2), pages 157-197, October.
    9. Francine Lafontaine & Margaret E. Slade, 1998. "Incentive Contracting and the Franchise Decision," NBER Working Papers 6544, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Blass, Asher A & Carlton, Dennis W, 2001. "The Choice of Organizational Form in Gasoline Retailing and the Cost of Laws That Limit That Choice," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 511-524, October.
    11. Itai Ater & Oren Rigbi, 2007. "Price Control In Franchised Chains: The Case Of McDonald's Dollar Menu," Discussion Papers 06-022, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    12. Juan Luis Jiménez & Jordi Perdiguero, 2018. "Mergers and difference-in-difference estimator: Why firms do not increase prices?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 285-311, April.
    13. Cooper, James C. & Froeb, Luke M. & O'Brien, Dan & Vita, Michael G., 2005. "Vertical antitrust policy as a problem of inference," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(7-8), pages 639-664, September.
    14. Deck, Cary A. & Wilson, Bart J., 2008. "Experimental gasoline markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 134-149, July.
    15. Palencia-González, Francisco J. & Navío-Marco, Julio & Juberías-Cáceres, Gema, 2020. "Analysis of brand influence in the rockets and feathers effect using disaggregated data," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    16. Irmen, Andreas, 1998. "Precommitment in Competing Vertical Chains," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(4), pages 333-359, September.
    17. Jordi Perdiguero, 2011. "Vertical relations and local competition: an empirical approach," IREA Working Papers 201124, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Dec 2011.
    18. Bello, Alejandro & Contín-Pilart, Ignacio, 2012. "Taxes, cost and demand shifters as determinants in the regional gasoline price formation process: Evidence from Spain," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 439-448.
    19. Marissa Beck & Fiona Scott Morton, 2021. "Evaluating the Evidence on Vertical Mergers," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 59(2), pages 273-302, September.
    20. Meiseberg, Brinja & Perrigot, Rozenn, 2020. "Pricing-based practices, conflicts and performance in franchising," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 939-955.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:7435. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.