Price discrimination and market structure: the case of gasoline stations in greek islands

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between price discrimination and market structure in gasoline retailing in Greek islands. In particular, it studies how price discrimination varies with competition, using daily price patterns of unleaded gasoline 95 across fueling stations in Greek islands during August 2011-August 2012. Hence, we (a) investigate the existence of price dispersion in gasoline retailing across different Greek islands, as well as within them, and (b) econometrically estimate the impact of the island characteristics (size, population density, number and size of ports, flow of tourists, etc) and the competition measures (brands, number of competitors in the island) on average gasoline price dispersion at the local community level.