This paper describes a simulation analysis of the impacts of a strategic fuels reserve (SFR) designed to limit the increase in gasoline prices in the days following a refinery disruption. The analysis is based on a computer simulation model developed for the California Energy Commission. The model simulates the supply of gasoline as the sum of refinery production, cargoes arriving from outside ...

The relationship between gasoline prices and the demand for vehicle fuel efficiency is important for environmental policy but poorly understood in the academic literature. We provide empirical evidence that automobile manufacturers price as if consumers respond to gasoline prices. We derive a reduced-form regression equation from theoretical micro-foundations and estimate the equation with near...

This paper applies artificial neural networks to forecast gasoline consumption. The ANN is implemented using the cross entropy error function in the training stage. The cross entropy function is proven to accelerate the backpropagation algorithm and to provide good overall network performance with relatively short stagnation periods. To forecast gasoline consumption (GC), the ANN uses previous ...

This paper calculates the optimal gasoline tax for the state of California. According to our analysis, the optimal gasoline tax in California is $1.37/gallon, which is over 3 times the current California tax when excluding sales taxes. The Pigovian tax is the largest part of this tax, comprising $0.85/gallon. Of this, the congestion externality is taxed the most heavily, at $0.27, followed by o...

The demand for gasoline follows a seasonal cycle in Sweden. The paper investigates the response in prices and profits over the cycle. In contrast to what has been found for the gasoline market in the United States I find no support for seasonal price changes compatible with the recently developed theories for cyclical variations of intensity of competition. Some possible explanations for this d...

The consumer response to changing gasoline prices has long interested economists and policymakers, for it has important implications for the effects of gasoline taxation and vehicle energy efficiency policies. This study examines both the elasticity of driving with respect to changing gasoline prices and heterogeneity in this elasticity by geography, the fuel economy of the vehicle, and the age...

This paper contrasts the performance of heterogeneous and shrinkage estimators versus the more traditional homogeneous panel data estimators. The analysis utilizes a panel data set from 21 French regions over the period 1973-1998 and a dynamic demand speci...cation to study the gasoline demand in France. Out-of-sample forecast performance as well as the plausibility of the various estimators ar...