Do Auctions and Forced Divestitures Increase Competition? Evidence for Retail Gasoline Markets
研究了荷兰政府拍卖高速公路加油站经营权并强制四大公司剥离部分站点对价格的影响，发现仅拍卖无效果，强制剥离使被剥离站点价格下降1.3-2.3%，周边站点也下降0.9-1.2%。
To foster competition, governments can intervene by auctioning licenses to operate, or by imposing divestitures. The D utch government has done exactly that, organizing auctions to redistribute tenancy rights for highway gasoline stations and imposing divestitures of such stations on the four major companies. We evaluate this policy experiment and find that the auctioning of licenses without an obligation to divest has no discernible effect on prices. An obligation to divest lowers prices by 1.3–2.3% at divested sites. Moreover, prices decrease by 0.9–1.2% at sites nearby. This suggests that the observed price decreases are at least partly due to competitive spillovers.