Vancouver is ranked as having the highest gas prices in North America. So I decided to go to a smaller city to compare it.
Kelowna is a 4 hour drive from Vancouver.
What I found unique about Kelowna was that they have the exact same gas prices for every station. 109.9 cents per litre. And the prices did not change during the 2 days I was there.
One might argue that they are price-fixing (which would be illegal) but I think this is the beauty of economics. In Kelowna, there are a lot of gas stations so there’s high supply. And because everyone there drives a lot, there's a high demand for fuel.
Therefore, these gas stations will lose customers if they price even a bit higher than the competitors. So they all decided to match the lowest price and now they found the right price— which just so happens to be 109.9 cents per litre.
Have you ever learned about economics in school? Well, this is probably the closest real-life example I’ve seen of a “perfect competition.”
Sources on the high gas prices in Vancouver: Financialpost & Gasbuddy
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