Korean Energy Economic Review ISSN:1599-7057(Print) 에너지경제연구

Many studies about the asymmetry of petroleum products have been conducted. However, there are few studies which performed the study on the sensitivity test on various options related to model setting. In this study, I aimed to test the sensitivity on the results of price asymmetry test with the model structure. Four variables are considered such as data period, frequency, distribution reference, and methodology. Coefficients of the variables and F-statistics were obtained with total 90 models under the null hypothesis of symmetry assumption. Regression was conducted with the F-statistics as a dependent variable and the former four variables as dummy variables. As a results, I could find the statistical significance with some variables; distribution reference, period, and methodology. With the COIA (Cotemporaneous impact asymmetry), Korean retail gasoline price is adjusted more symmetrically with the Singapore product price than Dubai crude oil price. With the CUIA(cumulated impact asymmetry), significant price asymmetry was observed in the period of high oil prices (Jan.2001 to Sep.2009) compared with the whole period(Jan.1997 to Sep.2009). In ECM model the result from the methodology of Bettendorf et al.(2003) tends to be more symmetric than the result from Borenstein et al.(1997).