Working Paper Series no. 375: The Dynamics of Gasoline Prices: Evidence from Daily French Micro Data

Abstract

Using millions of individual gasoline prices collected at a daily frequency, we examine the speed at which market refined oil prices are transmitted toconsumer liquid fuel prices. We find that on average gasoline prices are modified once a week and the distribution of price changes displays a M-shape as predicted by a menu-cost model. Using a reduced form state-dependent pricing model with time-varying random thresholds, 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. 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.

Erwan Gautier and Ronan Le Saout
April 2012

Classification JEL : E31, D43, L11

Keywords : price stickiness, menu costs, (S,s) models, gasoline price