www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Here's a recent study looking at something similar in the German market (though I would add German market is quite different). Many stations have lots of daily price changes, which is v rare in the UK.

Tendency to search can be driven by factors such as amount of disposable income, saliency of prices in the news, and price growth.
Local market structure also matters as well - higher numbers of sellers in a local market is more likely to induce pro-competitive effects.

We show in our work that it's not so much about having an online platform (there have been publicly available variants for quite a long time). It's about people using it. Higher usage in areas -> increased price sensitivity -> lower (relative) average local prices.

Maybe prices are now uniform because of fuel finder!

Government’s seven New Town locations scored against real-world demand data - Manchester and Leeds most likely to succeed The Warwick economists behind the Wheretobuild housing demand mapping tool have used their database to test the government’s seven-site shortlist against measures of likely success, and ranked the sit...

New policy brief from @amritakulka.bsky.social and myself:

We assess the 7 new towns viability given pre-existing excess housing demand, access to jobs, local amenities, similar nearby developments, and prospects given planned infrastructure.

warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econ...

“Profit margins expand after the crisis has passed when prices start to slowly drift back down.”

@nikdatta.bsky.social discusses his research on oil price spikes for a Times investigation on the increasing cost of fuel and ‘price gouging’

buff.ly/gBhLQCq

Do petrol retailers really ‘price-gouge’ during oil price spikes? Research suggests that profiteering may actually be more likely when we’re not watching prices closely.

New article from myself & Johannes Brinkmann out in The Conversation on petrol price gouging (or lack thereof)
theconversation.com/do-petrol-re...

8. The main takeaway - petrol retailers can make "excess profits". But it doesn't happen during oil price spikes when everyone is looking.
Full piece here: warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econ...

7. There is substantial heterogeneity in this asymmetry. Some stations exhibit close to no asymmetry, while others have up to 5 times the size of the average.

6. On average, this asymmetry implies that when wholesale prices rise by 10 pence per litre and then fall by 10 pence per litre over a 60-day period, consumers pay about 1 pence per litre more on average during that period than they would if retail prices adjusted symmetrically.

5. This suggests that margins increase when prices fall, and more so in total than when prices had risen. The search data suggests that when prices are falling, even from record high levels, search intensity is much lower, which reduces competitive pressures to transmit price changes as quick.

4. This doesn't mean that retailers don't make excess profits at certain times. There is very strong evidence of "rocket & feather" pass-through. In particular, wholesale price decreases transmit far slower to retail prices.

3. To demonstrate the mechanism we use geocoded data on 200 million+ searches from that period combined with daily prices for the near-universe of petrol stations. We find that areas which saw larger search increases also saw relatively lower prices increases.

2. The mechanism for margins falling is quite straightforward. When retail prices increase rapidly, people shop around more which increases competition and puts downward pressures on prices. We focus on the spike which pushed the price over £1.50 in 2022. Searches increased by 10 fold.

1. Petrol retailers are not making excess profits. When oil prices spike, whole sale prices track immediately, but retail prices adjust much slower and margins actually fall.

Excess profits are being made at the pumps – but not when you think New analysis of fuel prices confirms a long-held suspicion – at times of crisis when wholesale oil prices rise, prices at the pump also rise quickly – but they are slower to match any subsequent fall.

There has been a lot of discussion around petrol "price gouging" over the last few days. New @cagewarwick.bsky.social policy note from myself and Johannes Brinkmann on this claim with some analysis from around the Russian Invasion of Ukrain. The main points:

Excess profits are being made at the pumps – but not when you think New analysis of fuel prices confirms a long-held suspicion – at times of crisis when wholesale oil prices rise, prices at the pump also rise quickly – but they are slower to match any subsequent fall.

We’ve done analysis on this. There’s no evidence that retailers price gouge during price spikes. If anything the opposite happens- margins fall, and excess profits happen when wholesale prices fall.

warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econ...

warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econ...

warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econ...

We touch on this a bit in here (which is more about the UKs RTFO)

Still have my bootleg press of the Grey Album on vinyl. What a producer

@amritakulka.bsky.social and my housing work was featured on ITV Tonight yesterday. You can play with a fun map and read more about it here: wheretobuild.warwick.ac.uk

#TeamHair strikes again

@amritakulka.bsky.social and I are looking to hire a full time predoc to work with us on a project on land use regulation and market power in the housing market. If you're interested in (very) big data and applied econ please do apply! #econra #econ_ra
econjobmarket.org/positions/12...

New piece from #TeamHair

Working paper on options for reform of non-compete clauses in employment contracts

ICYMI given today's focus on the budget: the UK government has today also published a working paper on options for reform of non-compete agreements.

Responses to the specific options set out therein (statutory limits, size cutoffs and an outright ban), can be submitted until 18 February.

1/2

Yesterday was my last day at the CMA.

It has been a real honour helping to build its research function over the last three years. This therefore seems like a good opportunity to highlight a few things we have published in recent years.

1/

🚨 undergrads and masters students interested in careers in applied econ research:

My department is recruiting 4-5 full-time RAs to start summer 2026. See the announcement here for more details: jessiehandbury.com/misc/RAflyer...

A few reasons you should apply...

Could new tenants’ rights usher in rent controls? Here’s why that wouldn’t necessarily be a positive The government says it doesn’t back rent controls – but new protections should limit how much landlords can push up prices.

New piece from me and Jan Bakker in The Conversation

theconversation.com/could-new-te...

Assessment Tool. Scottish Local Planning Authorities prepare a Local Housing Strategy based on local Housing Need and Demand Assessments. We take these different systems into account when we discuss housing targets in
section 4.4." Page 6. Not sure you read it very well.

"This table shows the history of housing target policies only for England. Wales and Scotland have devolved housing delivery policies with Welsh Local Planning Authorities setting housing numbers in their Local Development Plans informed by the Welsh government’s Local Housing Market...

Commenting on an article having not read it is quite a basic error, but not uncommon.
“In practice we use separate gaps for England, Scotland and Wales, aggregated from LA targets which amount to England - 371994, Scotland - 20045 and Wales - 9879 homes per year.“ Page 37.