Price Leadership and Uncertainty About Future Costs*
利用智利汽油零售业的政策干预，研究发现减少批发价格波动会降低零售利润，且价格领导强度越高的市场利润下降越多，表明不确定性有助于企业协调。
Does uncertainty about future wholesale prices facilitate coordination among firms? To address this question, we exploit a policy intervention (Mepco) that limited the week‐to‐week variation in wholesale prices in the Chilean retail gasoline industry. We show that Mepco caused a decrease in retail gasoline margins in Chile. Further, using price leadership intensity as a proxy for the strength of market coordination, we show that margins decreased more in markets with higher leadership intensity. We rationalize these findings through a repeated‐game framework.