Increased market transparency in Germany's gasoline market: what about rockets and feathers?

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Drawing on panel data on daily fuel prices covering over 5,000 filling stations in Germany, this paper documents a change in the stations' price setting behavior following the introduction of a legally mandated online price portal in 2013. Prior to the portal, positive asymmetry is found on the basis of error correction models, with prices following the "rockets and feathers" pattern that is typically found for fuels. In the aftermath of the portal, by contrast, negative asymmetry is observed: fuel price decreases in response to refinery price decreases are stronger than fuel price increases due to refinery price increases