Spatial Differentiation and Vertical Mergers in Retail Markets for Gasoline
构建了一个空间竞争模型，将通勤路径视为消费者位置，分析汽油市场的空间差异化，并用魁北克市的面板数据评估纵向合并的影响。
This paper studies an empirical model of spatial competition applied to gasoline markets. The main feature is to specify commuting paths as the “locations'' of consumers in a Hotelling-style model. As a result, spatial differentiation depends in an intuitive way on the structure of the road network and the direction of traffic flows. The model is estimated using panel data on the Quebec City gasoline market and used to evaluate the consequences of a recent vertical merger. Difference-in-difference and counterfactual simulation methods are compared, and the results, to a large extent, validate the assumptions of the demand model.