Congestion and Market Structure in the Airline Industry
Abstract
Empirical research on the relationship between market congestion and the market competitive level largely falsifies the positive relationship predicted by theoretical models. In this paper, I exploit the airline industry network structure and focus on the level of congestion during periods in which passengers cross-connect to their final destinations. About 70% of hub airport flights depart or land during these periods. The empirical analysis establishes a strong positive relationship. Furthermore, based on a simple theoretical model, I am able to quantify the potential time savings from eliminating congestion externalities and find that, on average, a flight can save 2 minutes of flight time at its departing airport and another 1.5 minutes at its destination airport. I also find that airlines choose to pad their schedule particularly on competitive routes, presumably to attract uninformed passengers. JEL classification: L93; R41;Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by NET Institute in its series Working Papers with number 07-28.Length: 42 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2007
Date of revision: Sep 2007
Handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:0728
Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.NETinst.org/
Related research
Keywords: Congestion; Air Transportation;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- L93 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Air Transportation
- R41 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Systems - - - Transportation: Demand, Supply, and Congestion
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2007-10-27 (All new papers)
- NEP-COM-2007-10-27 (Industrial Competition)
- NEP-IND-2007-10-27 (Industrial Organization)
- NEP-NET-2007-10-27 (Network Economics)
- NEP-URE-2007-10-27 (Urban & Real Estate Economics)
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:0728For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Nicholas Economides).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

