Short-run fuel price responses: At the pump and on the road

- Motorists respond to gas prices at the pump, tanking less when prices are high.
- Gas price levels do not impact the daily distance driven between refills.
- Oil price volatility affects neither the amount tanked nor mileage in the short run.

We provide evidence that motorists respond to short-run fluctuations in fuel prices at the gas pump and not on the road. Employing variants of censored panel regression to control for censoring of the dependent variable, we find that the fuel price has a negative impact on the quantity of fuel purchased, but no consistently significant impact on the subsequent distance driven until the next refill. Over the short run, drivers thus appear to cope with high fuel prices by adjusting fuel purchases with each visit to the filling station, but without altering their daily mileage.