This paper empirically examines whether major domestic oil companies held down product prices relative to their less visible counterparts during the 1979 oil crisis. The authors compare company prices on unregulated fuel oil with a measure of political pressure--the level of television coverage of the energy crisis. They find that media coverage influenced home heating oil price ratios, but did not influence residual fuel oil price ratios for the same companies. The authors argue that this differential pricing pattern is rational in a politically sensitive period. Copyright 1990, the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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