One of the most frequently examined statistical relationships in energy economics has been the price elasticity of gasoline demand. We conduct a quantitative survey of the estimates of elasticity reported for various countries around the world. Our meta-analysis indicates that the literature suffers from publication selection bias: insignificant or positive estimates of the price elasticity are rarely reported, although implausibly large negative estimates are reported regularly. In consequence, the average published estimates of both short-and long-run elasticities are exaggerated twofold.Using mixed-effects multilevel meta-regression, we show that after correction for publication bias the average long-run elasticity reaches −0.31 and the average short-run elasticity only −0.09.

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