Prices At The Pump: Market Failure And The Oil Industry

American gasoline consumers are fed up with rising gasoline prices and they have good reason to be. Over the past five years the average annual household expenditure for gasoline has increased by over $1,000. Rural households have been particularly hard hit because they spend about 20 percent more for gasoline than their urban brethren. A major cause of this immense increase in consumer cost is the failure of Federal antitrust authorities to prevent the abuse of market power by oil companies and the failure of the Administration and Congress to enact policies that will fix the failures that plague the gasoline market.