IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v95y2013i4p1368-1385.html

Airline Alliances, Antitrust Immunity, and Market Foreclosure

Author

Listed:
  • Volodymyr Bilotkach

    (Northumbria University)

  • Kai Hüschelrath

    (ZEW Centre for European Economic Research)

Abstract

We examine the issue of market foreclosure by airline partnerships with antitrust immunity. Overlapping data on frequency of service and passenger volumes on nonstop transatlantic routes with information on the dynamics of airline partnerships, we find evidence consistent with the airlines operating under antitrust immunity refusing to accept connecting passengers from the outside carriers at respective hub airports. Following the antitrust immunity, airlines outside the partnership reduce their traffic to the partner airlines' hub airports by 4.1% to 11.5%. We suggest regulators should take possible market foreclosure effects into account when assessing the competitive effects of antitrust immunity for airline alliances. © 2013 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Volodymyr Bilotkach & Kai Hüschelrath, 2013. "Airline Alliances, Antitrust Immunity, and Market Foreclosure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(4), pages 1368-1385, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:95:y:2013:i:4:p:1368-1385
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00308
    File Function: link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Fageda, Xavier & Flores-Fillol, Ricardo & Theilen, Bernd, 2019. "Hybrid cooperation agreements in networks: The case of the airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 194-227.
    2. Czerny, Achim I. & Jost, Peter-J. & Lang, Hao & Mantin, Benny, 2021. "Carrier collaboration with endogenous networks: Or, the limits of what carrier collaboration can achieve under antitrust immunity," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    3. Slade, Margaret E., 2019. "Vertical Mergers: Ex Post Evidence and Ex Ante Evaluation Methods," Microeconomics.ca working papers margaret_e._slade-2019-10, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 25 Jun 2019.
    4. Volodymyr Bilotkach, 2019. "Airline Partnerships, Antitrust Immunity, and Joint Ventures: What We Know and What I Think We Would Like to Know," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 54(1), pages 37-60, February.
    5. Lin, Ming Hsin, 2021. "Airport pricing and capacity: Schedule versus congestion delays," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    6. Fageda, Xavier & Flores-Fillol, Ricardo & Lin, Ming Hsin, 2020. "Vertical differentiation and airline alliances: The effect of antitrust immunity," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    7. Calzada, Joan & Fageda, Xavier & Safronov, Roman, 2022. "How do global airline alliances affect flight frequency? Evidence from Russia," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    8. Margaret E. Slade, 2021. "Vertical Mergers: A Survey of Ex Post Evidence and Ex Ante Evaluation Methods," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 58(4), pages 493-511, June.
    9. Xia, Wenyi & Zhang, Anming, 2016. "High-speed rail and air transport competition and cooperation: A vertical differentiation approach," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 456-481.
    10. de Jong, Gerben & Behrens, Christiaan & van Ommeren, Jos, 2019. "Airline loyalty (programs) across borders: A geographic discontinuity approach," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 251-272.
    11. Morrison, William G. & de Wit, Jaap, 2019. "US open skies agreements and unlevel playing fields," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 30-38.
    12. Bilotkach, Volodymyr & Hüschelrath, Kai, 2019. "Balancing competition and cooperation: Evidence from transatlantic airline markets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 1-16.
    13. Stephen Martin, 2012. "Market Structure and Market Performance," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 40(2), pages 87-108, March.
    14. Li, Lu & Wan, Yulai & Yang, Dong, 2024. "Do shipping alliances affect freight rates? Evidence from global satellite ship data," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    15. Brueckner, Jan K. & Singer, Ethan, 2019. "Pricing by international airline alliances: A retrospective study," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • L93 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Air Transportation
    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:tpr:restat:v:95:y:2013:i:4:p:1368-1385. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: The MIT Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.