In this article, I analyze how persistently lower gasoline prices in Poland affect the prices set in the German border region. Based on a complete dataset of German gasoline prices and an assessment of driving distances between gasoline stations, I estimate the impact of one additional kilometer of distance to the nearest Polish competitor on the price charged by German gasoline stations. Following the fixed effects filtered estimator approach proposed by Pesaran and Zhou (2018) and controlling for various station characteristics, I find no evidence that German gasoline stations enter price competition with their Polish counterparts. My descriptive analysis of gasoline station infrastructure in the German border region reveals increasingly sparse gasoline station density when approaching the Polish border, along with an increasing share of premium brands. These results may reflect the effect of substantially lower taxes in Poland, discouraging German gasoline stations from locating near the border and effectively ruling out cross-border price competition. Although indirect, my findings suggest the presence of fuel tourism.

中文翻译：

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汽油零售市场的跨境竞争：德国-波兰边境邻近性的影响


在本文中，我分析了波兰持续走低的汽油价格如何影响德国边境地区的价格。根据德国汽油价格的完整数据集和对加油站之间行驶距离的评估，我估计了与最近的波兰竞争对手多开一公里的距离对德国加油站收费的影响。遵循 Pesaran 和 周 （2018） 提出的固定效应过滤估计器方法并控制各种加油站特征，我发现没有证据表明德国加油站与波兰加油站进行价格竞争。我对德国边境地区加油站基础设施的描述性分析显示，当接近波兰边境时，加油站密度越来越稀疏，而高端品牌的份额也在增加。这些结果可能反映了波兰大幅降低税收的影响，阻止了德国加油站在边境附近，并有效地排除了跨境价格竞争。虽然是间接的，但我的发现表明了燃料旅游的存在。