How does the Internet effect retail pricing? In contrast to previous empirical research that focuses on price dispersion and static margins, this paper examines how the Internet and web-based price clearing houses effect dynamic asymmetric pricing adjustment (e.g., "rockets and feathers"). We...

This article introduces two retail fuel price databases in Australia, FuelWatch and FuelCheck. Each dataset consists of a complete panel of station-level prices over time and across stations, and they are available for public access via web download. We provide background on how the two...

This article provides an overview of the burgeoning academic literature on price dynamics and price cycles in retail petrol markets. I first present evidence of petrol price cycles, and studies that describe what types of petrol markets tend to exhibit price cycles. I further discuss empirical...

Using a natural experiment from a retail gasoline antitrust case, we study how asymmetric information sharing affects oligopoly pricing. Empirically, price competition softens when, following case settlement, information sharing shifts from symmetric to asymmetric, with one firm losing access to...

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...

In many markets, prices adjust quickly when costs rise, yet adjust sluggishly when costs fall. Such asymmetric pricing has received particular attention in retail gasoline where, worryingly, larger asymmetry has been related to greater market power. Using novel data from urban and rural gasoline...

This paper develops direct tests for search behavior in retail gasoline markets. We exploit a unique market-level dataset that allows us to directly measure search intensity with daily web traffic data from a gasoline price reporting website and perfectly measure daily changes in price levels...