An empirical analysis of the spatial variability of fuel prices in the United States

In this paper, we use a newly constructed dataset to study the geographic distribution of fuel price across the US at a very high resolution. We study the influence of socio-economic variables through different and complementary statistical methods. We highlight an optimal spatial range roughly corr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Transportation research. Part A, Policy and practice Policy and practice, 2020-02, Vol.132, p.131-143
Main Authors: Bergeaud, Antonin, Raimbault, Juste
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Biodiversity and Ecology
Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases
Chaotic Dynamics
Computational Finance
Computer Science
Data crawling
Discrete Mathematics
Environmental Sciences
Fuel price
Geographically weighted regression
Geography
Humanities and Social Sciences
Machine Learning
Multi-level modeling
Multiagent Systems
Nonlinear Sciences
Quantitative Finance
Spatial analysis
Statistics
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Summary:In this paper, we use a newly constructed dataset to study the geographic distribution of fuel price across the US at a very high resolution. We study the influence of socio-economic variables through different and complementary statistical methods. We highlight an optimal spatial range roughly corresponding to stationarity scale, and significant influence of variables such as median income, wage with a non-simple spatial behavior that confirms the importance of geographical particularities. On the other hand, multi-level modeling reveals a strong influence of the state in the level of price but also of some local characteristics including population density. Through the combination of such methods, we unveil the superposition of a governance process with a local socio-economical spatial process. The influence of population density on prices is furthermore consistent with a minimal theoretical model of competition between gas stations, that we introduce and solve numerically. We discuss developments and applications, including the elaboration of locally parametrized car-regulation policies.
ISSN:0965-8564
1879-2375
DOI:10.1016/j.tra.2019.10.016