• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.69-92
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• 2012

This paper analyzed price asymmetry of domestic petroleum products by distribution stage. Analyzing the asymmetry by distribution stage, we can investigate the gap between analysis results and consumers' perception. For the first stage, we analyzed asymmetries between retail prices including tax and the spot prices of crude oil. The results show that retail price increases more quickly in response to the crude oil prices rise than to the crude oil prices fall as consumers' perception. For the second stage, we analyzed asymmetry of international petroleum product prices in Korean Won with the change in the crude oil spot prices. The results show that international petroleum product prices increase higher in response to the crude oil prices increase than to the crude oil prices decrease. For the final stage, we examined the asymmetry of wholesale price and retail price with the change in the international petroleum product prices in Korean Won. The results show that wholesale prices increase more quickly in response to the crude oil prices rise than to the international petroleum product prices fall. The retail prices, however, decrease more quickly in response to the crude oil prices fall than to the international petroleum product prices rise.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.663-688
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• 2011

Since the liberalization of petroleum product prices in 1997, there has been persistent suspicion with regard to asymmetry in the movement of petroleum product prices in Korea. In particular, academics and consumer groups suggest that prices decided by refining companies and gas stations have moved asymmetrically compared with international petroleum product prices. The primary aim of this study is to determine, using the Error Correction Model, to perform multi-country asymmetry analysis including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Japan. We shows that comparison of domestic prices with international prices in the six countries mentioned above revealed a fairly low level of asymmetry in those countries, although some asymmetry was found in some countries at various times within the period of analysis. To explain the different degrees of asymmetry between countries, this study looked at asymmetry in the United States, Germany and Italy and sought correlations between each country's oil industry structure and its level of competition.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.813-843
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• 2008

This paper investigates the presence of long-run and short-run price asymmetries in weekly gasoline prices from January 1997 to July 2008. In accordance with distribution channels, wholesale and retail stages are analyzed separately. An approach based on TAR and M-TAR cointegration tests, which entail matching asymmetric ECMs, is employed. For wholesale prices, asymmetries in the links with crude oil prices and exchange rates are found for both ECMs in the long-run and short-run. Exchange rates appear to play more significant role than crude oil prices in explaining the short-run price asymmetry. The rise in crude oil prices or exchange rates has statistically significant major impact on the increase of wholesale prices on the second week, not immediately as expected in the concept of 'rockets and feathers'. And asymmetrically, the fall does not have any statistically significant effect on the same period. The finding seems to be somewhat unusual. However, for retail prices, asymmetry m connection with wholesale prices is only revealed in the long-run. A symmetric price adjustment can be assumed in the short-run. Contrary to the long-run asymmetry found in the wholesale stage, in the retail stage, the speed of adjustment for negative deviations toward long-run equilibrium is faster than for positive ones, which is a phenomenon not favorable to consumers.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.643-670
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• 2013

This study analyzed the impact of crude oil inventory while gasoline price adjusts to international crude oil price(WTI) fluctuations. We mainly focused on asymmetric relationship between crude oil and petroleum product prices and added oil inventory as an variable, using the error correction model which is based on Borenstein et al.(1997). This paper selected the sample period from January 1988 to December 2012, analyzed the asymmetry of each intervals and the influence of crude oil inventory to the degree of asymmetry changes, both full period and five years period respectively. The results showed that when considering crude oil inventory, existence and degrees of time amount asymmetry varies.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.311-342
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• 2015

We evaluate two main rationales of massive policy intervention of Lee Administration in the Korean transportation fuel market: high market share of domestic refineries, perceived by the Administration as the result of high market concentration, and asymmetry in price adjustment, perceived as the result of collusion. Domestic refineries, huge in capacity and located at seaports, maintain international competitiveness in price. Considering market openness offering preferential treatment to importers, they set domestic prices competitively on the basis of MOPS prices. Yet, the price competitiveness of domestic refineries is so high that they are able to sustain high market share. We confirm that the Korean before-tax consumer prices of gasoline and diesel are lower than Japan's and the weighted averages of 27 EU countries by as much as 159KRW and 21KRW per liter in the case of gasoline and 170KRW and 63KRW in the case of diesel. Price asymmetry is caused by diverse economic and managerial reasons and, as FTC (2005) states, price asymmetry does not immediately imply exercise of market power or collusion. We analyzed price asymmetry in Korea, Japan and 14 EU countries, and found asymmetry in Korea and 11 EU countries in the case of gasoline and in Korea and 8 EU countries in the case of diesel.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.181-190
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• 2018

The goal of this study is empirically to investigate the asymmetric relationship between two variables using the dry cargo freight rates and raw material price data from January 2012 to May 2018. First, we estimate the asymmetry of macroeconomic indicators of commodity prices by using a two - step threshold cointegration test. Second, the asymmetric relation test of the trade balance of existing commodity price changes is tested by bypassing to the high frequency dry cargo freight rate index. As a result of the estimation, in contrast to the existing linear analysis, each boundary value for the lower limit and the upper limit has different asymmetry. This implies that the period of fluctuation of the sudden residual that causes irregular rate of return fluctuations does not establish a long term equilibrium relationship between the raw material price and the dry cargo freight rate. Therefore, in order to consider the sudden price change in the analysis, it is necessary to include the band of inaction that controls the irregular volatility, which is consistent with the asymmetry hypothesis.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.833-854
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• 2007

Output prices tend to respond faster to input price increases than to decreases. The 'rockets and feathers' hypothesis of asymmetric price behavior in petroleum market is tested by a full adjustment error correction model. Using monthly data for the period January 1977 to June 2006, evidence is found that there is a significant degree of asymmetry in the adjustment of wholesale prices to increases and to decreases in crude oil price. A similar hypothesis in regard to the exchange rate is also rejected by the data. Using weekly data over the period examined, evidence of asymmetry for gasoline, diesel and heating oil is also found in the transmission of price changes from wholesale to retail: retail prices increase more quickly in response to the wholesale price increases than to wholesale price decreases.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.613-641
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• 2013

This paper uses the error correction model to analyse dynamic gasoline price adjustments of the four refiners. Unlike the existing studies, this model allows a refiner's asymmetric adjustment to changes in the other refiners' prices as well as in its own price and costs. With the estimation results, we can obtain the following findings. First, there are the asymmetric price adjustments to changes in exchange rate and international gasoline price, but showing opposing directions. Second, for most of the refiners, the prices respond immediately to the lagged deviation from the long run equilibrium price, but asymmetrically respond for a few refiners. Third, there are some refiners that adjust their price to the other refiners' price deviation from the long run equilibrium. For some refiners, there are competitive price adjustments to the others' price deviations. These findings imply that a refiner faces inelastic demand, intends to maintain implicitly a relative level of its own price to others, and tends to respond competitively to the others' price deviation from the equilibrium.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.755-775
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• 2022

This study empirically analyzes that the asymmetry of domestic gasoline price adjustment to the crude oil price changes can vary depending on the level of gasoline price using quantile autoregressive distributed lag model. The data used are the weekly average Dubai price, domestic gasoline price at refiners and gas stations from the first week of May 2008 to the second week of October 2022. The study estimates three price transmission channels: changes in gas station gasoline prices in response to changes in Dubai oil prices, changes in refiners gasoline prices in response to changes in Dubai oil prices, and changes in gas station prices relative to refiners gasoline prices. As a result, the price adjustment of refiner's gasoline price with respect to Dubai oil price appears asymmetrically across all quantiles of gasoline price, whereas the adjustment of gas station prices for Dubai oil price and refiner's gasoline price tend to be more asymmetric as the quantile of gasoline price increases. Such a result is presumed to be due to changes in the inventory cost of gas stations. When the burden of inventory cost is high, gas stations have an incentive to more actively pass the increased buying price on their selling price.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.495-516
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• 2016

This study empirically examines how asymmetric price adjustment of the retail gas price happens differently for various oil products, such as high-grade gasoline, regular gasoline, and diesel, by employing asymmetric error correction model within weekly data set from 2010~2015. Our estimation results show that the price adjustment, across the all oil types, predicated on shifting crude oil and wholesale oil prices is asymmetric. In addition, the duration of asymmetry was shorter in high-grade gasoline case than in other oil types. This took place by rapid price adjustment of high-grade gasoline price when faced with both cost increases and decreases, in comparison with regular gasoline and diesel cases. There results were attributed by characteristics of the consumer group and a high retail-wholesale margin of high-grade gasoline.