Testing for asymmetric pricing in the Canadian retail gasoline market

This paper applies a Threshold Regression model to test for asymmetric pric ing in the retail gasoline market in Canada, using weekly data for the peri od January 1990 to December 1996. We present results for 13 Canadian cities for both premium and regular gasoline. Within the context of an error corr ection model we test for the presence of asymmetric price behaviour using a verage changes in crude prices as well as various lags for the change in cr ude as possible thresholds. We are unable to find any evidence to support t his view. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classific ations: C52; D4; Q40.