Asymmetrical Information Sharing and Oligopoly Pricing: A Natural Experiment in Retail Gasoline
Speaker: Professor David Byrne
Affiliation: The University of Melbourne
Location: Room S402, Social Sciences Building (#24), UQ St Lucia Campus
Abstract
This paper uses a natural experiment from an antitrust case in retail gasoline to study how information sharing affects oligopoly pricing. Empirically, we find that price competition softens when a firm loses access to high-frequency rival price data from an information sharing platform as part of the case settlement. A case-induced change to price commitment under strategic complementarity explains this result. Our welfare analysis reveals non-negligible increases in margins and harms to consumers stemming from the case. Finally, we discuss implications for designing price transparency policies, regulating pricing algorithms, and understanding platforms' potential effects on competition.
About the presenters meeting
If you would like to meet with Prof Byrne, contact: Dr Andrea La Nauze
About School Seminar Series
The School of Economics General Seminar Series is held on Fridays. These are in-person and presented by a range of guest researchers from around Australia and internationally.