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Abstract
This paper aims to evaluate the reaction of petrochemical and petroleum products markets (traded on the Iran Mercantile Exchange) to the removal of price ceilings imposed on it. After the implementation of targeted subsidies project and respective currency fluctuations in Iran, government imposed price controls on petrochemical market to prevent inflationary pressures of those events. Analysis of available data shows that after the price adjustment and the removal of price ceilings, the quantity of products supplied has increased and the quantity of products demanded has decreased. In particular, the demand for polymer and chemical products has decreased sharply by an amount of 80 and 57 percent respectively. Moreover, the share of speculative trading has decreased while the share of competitive trading has increased. Comparing the prices discovered in Iran Mercantile Exchange and the black market prices shows that a fraction of consumers have purchased the required raw materials from black market. The results of panel data model show that the removal of the price ceilings has had a significant negative effect on the excess demand in the petrochemical and petroleum markets: the excess demand (more than 3 thousand tones) has turned into an excess supply (156 tones). Removing the price limits has had the greatest impact on polymer products market where an excess demand of 4.76 thousand tones has turned into an excess supply of 29 tones. On the whole, the results of this paper show that the price ceiling policy had significant effects and it has had considerable distortionary effects on the market.
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