On January 1, 1998 Marathon and Ashland combined their refining and marketing assets in a joint venture which was unchallenged by U.S. antitrust authorities. Because there were no divestitures, the transaction led to a significant increase in concentration in the wholesale and retail sale of...

Marathon-Ashland Petroleum's (MAP) 1999 acquisition of the Michigan assets of Ultramar Diamond Shamrock (UDS) increased MAP's share of terminal storage in Michigan from about 16 percent to about 25 percent and increased the share of gasoline stations bearing a MAP brand from about 16 percent to...

We use a data set consisting of a three year panel of prices from a sample of gasoline stations located in suburban Washington DC and a corresponding census of the region's stations to develop three new empirical findings about retail gasoline pricing. First, while average retail margins vary...

This study measures the effects of the Marathon/Ashland Petroleum (MAP) joint venture on rack and retail reformulated (RFG) gasoline prices in the four cities where both firms sold RFG before the joint venture. MAP was an early transaction in the recent era of petroleum mergers and resulted in...

We have estimated the price effects of two changes in market structure resulting from two changes in the ownership of gasoline refineries in the San Francisco Bay area: Tosco's purchase of Unocal's Rodeo refinery in April 1997 and UDS's purchase of Tosco's Avon refinery in August 2000. These...