Price effects of calling out market power: A study of the COVID‐19 oil price shock
Aaron Barkley,
David P. Byrne and
Xiaosong Wu
Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2022, vol. 31, issue 4, 923-941
Abstract:
Governments often make public announcements that call into question firms' misuse of market power. Yet little is known about how firms respond to them. We study gasoline retailers' price responses to antitrust announcements shaming them for price gouging during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We identify price effects using a high‐frequency event‐study leveraging unique real‐time station‐level price data and well‐identified, discrete antitrust announcements. We find evidence of announcement effects that depend on firms' preannouncement margins and hence exposure to being publicly shamed. Public statements by antitrust questioning firms' misuse of market power can indeed contain signals that affect equilibrium outcomes.
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jems.12485
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:31:y:2022:i:4:p:923-941
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... ref=1058-6407&site=1
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Journal of Economics & Management Strategy from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().