The price strategies in the fuel market in Italy

Abstract

The work examines 'Price strategies in the fuel market in Italy', bringing the territorial dimension into line with the relevant economic and institutional aspects. For this reason, competition in the fuel sector is highly localized: supply stations recognize as rivals only the nearest stations (Van Meerbeeck, 2003). The role of competition: the Italian fuel market Recently, three empirical studies have analyzed the price behaviour of service stations in the fuel market in Italy, examining different aspects of competitive dynamics and highlighting the impact on retail prices. In the short period, competing oil companies aligned with the leader's price behaviour, and fuel prices reached the highest peak in the next two years. Moving from this investigation, Andreoli-Versbach and Franck, using econometric analysis, demonstrated the intention of the ENI to tacitly collude through the application of sticky-pricing. The contribution of Alderighi and Baudino (2015) focuses on the price behaviour of service stations, located in the province of Cuneo, proposing to empirically test four hypotheses.

Keywords

energy; prices and competition; Italy; urban economy; territorial indicators; Europe

JEL codes

Q41; D40; Q42