IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jproda/v16y2001i1p49-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Time Series Analysis of Strategic Pricing Behavior in the US Airline Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Ila Alam
  • Leola Ross
  • Robin Sickles

Abstract

A positive relationship betweencompetitive pressure and technical efficiency has been demonstratedby several studies; other studies hold forth that airline marketsbehave strategically. We bring these two literatures togetherby presenting a time series methodology to examine strategicpricing behavior and discussing the implications for airlineefficiency. We find evidence of dynamic, route-level, parallel( i.e. strategic) pricing despite highly variable price structures.A stable price relationship is consistent with successful coordinationof dynamic oligopolists and may highlight those routes wheresignificant market power exists. In light of previous research,this indicates that the airlines on these routes may not be attainingmaximum technical efficiency. For policy makers, this methodologyis useful for analyzing other markets which behave strategically. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001

Suggested Citation

  • Ila Alam & Leola Ross & Robin Sickles, 2001. "Time Series Analysis of Strategic Pricing Behavior in the US Airline Industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 49-62, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jproda:v:16:y:2001:i:1:p:49-62
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1011199102707
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1023/A:1011199102707
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1011199102707?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert H. Porter, 1983. "A Study of Cartel Stability: The Joint Executive Committee, 1880-1886," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 301-314, Autumn.
    2. Berry, Steven T, 1990. "Airport Presence as Product Differentiation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 394-399, May.
    3. Glenn Ellison, 1994. "Theories of Cartel Stability and the Joint Executive Committee," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(1), pages 37-57, Spring.
    4. James A. Brander & Anming Zhang, 1990. "Market Conduct in the Airline Industry: An Empirical Investigation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(4), pages 567-583, Winter.
    5. Brueckner, Jan K. & Spiller, Pablo T., 1991. "Competition and mergers in airline networks," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 323-342, September.
    6. Borenstein, Severin & Rose, Nancy L, 1994. "Competition and Price Dispersion in the U.S. Airline Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 653-683, August.
    7. Leola Ross, 1997. "When Will an Airline Stand Its Ground? An Analysis of Fare Wars," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 109-127.
    8. Brander, James A. & Zhang, Anming, 1993. "Dynamic oligopoly behaviour in the airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 407-435, September.
    9. Leola B. Ross, "undated". "When Will an Airline Stand Its Ground? An Analysis of Fare Wars," Working Papers 9703, East Carolina University, Department of Economics.
    10. Abreu, Dilip, 1986. "Extremal equilibria of oligopolistic supergames," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 191-225, June.
    11. Kathy J. Hayes & Leola B. Ross, 1998. "Is Airline Price Dispersion the Result of Careful Planning or Competitive Forces?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 13(5), pages 523-541, October.
    12. Severin Borenstein, 1989. "Hubs and High Fares: Dominance and Market Power in the U.S. Airline Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(3), pages 344-365, Autumn.
    13. Maskin, Eric & Tirole, Jean, 1988. "A Theory of Dynamic Oligopoly, II: Price Competition, Kinked Demand Curves, and Edgeworth Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(3), pages 571-599, May.
    14. Evans, William N & Kessides, Ioannis N, 1993. "Localized Market Power in the U.S. Airline Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(1), pages 66-75, February.
    15. Slade, Margaret E, 1989. "Price Wars in Price-Setting Supergames," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 56(223), pages 295-310, August.
    16. Porter, Robert H, 1985. "On the Incidence and Duration of Price Wars," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 415-426, June.
    17. David M. Kreps & Jose A. Scheinkman, 1983. "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 326-337, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Boon Liat Lee & Clevo Wilson & Carl A. Pasurka & Hidemichi Fujii & Shunsuke Managi, 2017. "Sources of airline productivity from carbon emissions: an analysis of operational performance under good and bad outputs," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 223-246, June.
    2. Azzeddine Azzam & Rigoberto Lopez & Elena Lopez, 2004. "Imperfect Competition and Total Factor Productivity Growth," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 173-184, November.
    3. Kristopher S. Gerardi & Adam Hale Shapiro, 2009. "Does Competition Reduce Price Dispersion? New Evidence from the Airline Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(1), pages 1-37, February.
    4. Boon L Lee & Clevo Wilson & Carl A Pasurka, Jr, 2013. "The Good, the Bad and the Efficient: Productivity, efficiency and technical change in the Airline Industry, 2004:2008," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 299, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
    5. Kristopher Gerardi & Adam Hale Shapiro, 2007. "The effects of competition on price dispersion in the airline industry: a panel analysis," Working Papers 07-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    6. Mantin, Benny & Koo, Bonwoo, 2009. "Dynamic price dispersion in airline markets," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(6), pages 1020-1029, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Damien J. Neven & Lars-Hendrik Röller & Zhentang Zhang, 1997. "Union Power and Product Market Competition: Evidence from the Airline Industry," CIG Working Papers FS IV 97-38, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
    2. Leola B. Ross, "undated". "When Will an Airline Stand Its Ground? An Analysis of Fare Wars," Working Papers 9703, East Carolina University, Department of Economics.
    3. Robert Gagné & Simon van Norden & Bruno Versaevel, 2003. "Testing Optimal Punishment Mechanisms Under Price Regulation: the Case of the Retail Market for Gasoline," CIRANO Working Papers 2003s-57, CIRANO.
    4. Damien J. Neven & Lars-Hendrik Röller & Zhentang Zhang, 2002. "Endogenous Costs and Price-Cost Margins," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 294, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Leola Ross, 1997. "When Will an Airline Stand Its Ground? An Analysis of Fare Wars," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 109-127.
    6. Kristopher Gerardi & Adam Hale Shapiro, 2007. "The effects of competition on price dispersion in the airline industry: a panel analysis," Working Papers 07-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    7. Roller, Lars-Hendrik & Sickles, Robin C., 2000. "Capacity and product market competition: measuring market power in a 'puppy-dog' industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 845-865, August.
    8. Zhang, Yahua & Round, David K., 2011. "Price wars and price collusion in China's airline markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 361-372, July.
    9. Ciliberto, Federico & Williams, Jonathan, 2010. "Does Multimarket Contact Facilitate Tacit Collusion? Inference on Conjectural Parameters in the Airline Industry," MPRA Paper 24888, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2021. "Profit margins in U.S. domestic airline routes," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 245-251.
    11. Ma, Wenliang & Wang, Qiang & Yang, Hangjun & Zhang, Guoquan & Zhang, Yahua, 2020. "Understanding airline price dispersion in the presence of high-speed rail," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 93-102.
    12. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899.
    13. Clougherty, Joseph A., 2002. "US domestic airline mergers: the neglected international determinants," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 557-576, April.
    14. Chao Ma, 2019. "Does capital structure differently affect incumbents' responses to entry threat and actual entry?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 585-613, November.
    15. Joseph A. Clougherty, 2006. "The international drivers of domestic airline mergers in twenty nations: integrating industrial organization and international business," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 75-93.
    16. Federico Ciliberto & Jonathan W. Williams, 2014. "Does multimarket contact facilitate tacit collusion? Inference on conduct parameters in the airline industry," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(4), pages 764-791, December.
    17. Barla, Philippe, 2000. "Firm size inequality and market power," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 693-722, July.
    18. Gundelfinger, Javier & Coto-Millán, Pablo, 2020. "Price and demand behaviors in the Scandinavian airline industry following market liberalization," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    19. Kathy J. Hayes & Leola B. Ross, 1996. "Is airline price dispersion the result of careful planning or competitive forces?," Working Papers 9607, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    20. Du, Yan & McMullen, B. Starr & Kerkvliet, Joe R., 2008. "The economic impact of the ATA/Southwest Airlines code-share agreement," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 51-60.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jproda:v:16:y:2001:i:1:p:49-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.