Oil Products in Latin America: The Politics of Energy Pricing

Abstract

This paper looks at the pricing of petroleum products in Latin America and compares the policies adopted in countries with different endowments and with different traditions as to state involvement in the oil industry. I find that, in contrast to the OECD countries, product prices are used extensively as instruments of policy and that in general the more oil a country has the lower are its domestic prices. They also tend to be lower in the presence of state monopolies.