• 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.

• 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.24 no.4
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• pp.657-677
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• 2015

We employ a 3 regime-threshold vector error correction models (TVECM) to investigate the nonlinear dynamic adjustments of three marker crude oil prices such as WTI (West Texas Intermediate), Brent and Dubai. Especially we deal with 3 combinations of oil prices including WTI-Brent, WTI-Dubai and Brent-Dubai in order to analyze the dynamic adjustments of the prices based on the effects of the price spreads among these crude oil prices. Our daily spot prices data run from 2001.1.3 to 2014.12.31. We found that each combination is cointegrated over the period. WTI had dropped significantly in 2010 which had affected the movements of the spreads. To accomodate this fact, we divide the period into two sub-periods: 2000.1.3-2009.12.31 and 2010.1.1-2014.12.31. It is found that each combination is cointegrated in both sub-periods. Moroever, in the first sub-period, all three oil prices are shown to follow nonlinear dynamic adjustments. In the second sub-period, however, TVECM is better than VECM(vector error correction model) for WTI-Dubai and Brent-Dubai while VECM performs better for WTI-Brent. The transaction costs are estimated to be reduced for the second sub-period for WTI-Dubai and Brent-Dubai compared to the first sub-period.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.307-319
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• 2002

This study used the WGR model to generate the rainfall input and the modified Clark method to estimate the runoff with the aim of investigating how the errors from the areal average rainfall propagates to runoff estimates. This was done for several cases of raingauge density and also by considering several storm directions. Summarizing the study results are as follows. (1) Rainfall and runoff errors decrease exponentially as the raingauge density increases. However, the error stagnates after a threshold density of raingauges. (2) Rainfall errors more affect to runoff estimates when the density of raingauges is relatively low. Generally, the ratio between estimation errors of rainfall and runoff volumes was found much less than one, which indicates that there is a smoothing effect of the basin. However, the ratio between estimation errors of rainfall to peak flow becomes greater than one to indicate the amplification of rainfall effect to peak flow. (3) For the study basin in this studs no significant effect of storm direction could be found. However, the runoff error becomes higher when the storm and drainage directions are identical. Also, the error was found higher for the peak flow than for the overall runoff hydrograph.