A new model for cycles in retail petrol prices

This paper explores the way that retail petrol prices may vary in a cyclical way as a result of competitive behavior by petrol retailers when some drivers choose to fill up early when a low petrol price is available. We include a stochastic model for an individual driver’s use of petrol and consider what happens as the expected future price of petrol is adjusted either according to observed prices or in anticipation of cyclical behavior. This model is different from most previous work on petrol price cycles that has focussed on Edgeworth cycles.