IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/84395.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Merger Simulations in the American Airline Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Tonnerre, Antoine

Abstract

There has been a long history of mergers in the airline industry in the U.S.A., even more after the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. Besides, merger simulations are an increasingly popular exercise that allow for well-motivated predictions regarding the outcome of the mergers. This is of great use for competition authorities. There has already been some work on this topic, from Peters (2006). This paper will differ in the following: the most recent data will be used, merger simulations will be performed at the market level, marginal costs will be directly estimated, and Cournot conduct will be assumed. Moreover, almost twenty years from now, researchers already predicted the reduction of the number of airlines in this industry in the U.S.A., because of its network nature. This reduction lead to increased market power, but also to increased efficiencies (see for instance Borenstein, 1990, 1992, and Kim & Singal 1993). In the end, do mergers in this industry automatically raise prices and reduce volumes? Are they still desirable today and if so, under which conditions ?

Suggested Citation

  • Tonnerre, Antoine, 2017. "Merger Simulations in the American Airline Industry," MPRA Paper 84395, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:84395
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/84395/1/MPRA_paper_84395.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Severin Borenstein, 1992. "The Evolution of U.S. Airline Competition," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 45-73, Spring.
    2. Ng, Charles K & Seabright, Paul, 2001. "Competition, Privatisation and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from the Airline Industry," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(473), pages 591-619, July.
    3. Steven Berry & Panle Jia, 2010. "Tracing the Woes: An Empirical Analysis of the Airline Industry," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 1-43, August.
    4. Federico Ciliberto & Elie Tamer, 2009. "Market Structure and Multiple Equilibria in Airline Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(6), pages 1791-1828, November.
    5. Philip G. Gayle, 2004. "Does Price Matter? Price and Non-price Competition in the Airline Industry," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 163, Econometric Society.
    6. Peters, Craig, 2006. "Evaluating the Performance of Merger Simulation: Evidence from the U.S. Airline Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(2), pages 627-649, October.
    7. Kim, E Han & Singal, Vijay, 1993. "Mergers and Market Power: Evidence from the Airline Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 549-569, June.
    8. Steven C. Salop, 1979. "Monopolistic Competition with Outside Goods," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 141-156, Spring.
    9. 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.
    10. 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)

    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. Genakos, C. & Grey, F. & Ritz, R., 2020. "Generalized linear competition: From pass-through to policy," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2078, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    2. , 2023. "Price Competition and Endogenous Product Choice in Networks: Evidence from the US airline Industry," Working Papers 950, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    3. Federico Ciliberto & Emily E. Cook & Jonathan W. Williams, 2019. "Network Structure and Consolidation in the U.S. Airline Industry, 1990–2015," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 54(1), pages 3-36, February.
    4. DOI Naoshi & OHASHI Hiroshi, 2015. "An Airline Merger and its Remedies: JAL-JAS of 2002," Discussion papers 15100, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    5. Gil, Ricard & Kim, Myongjin, 2021. "Does competition increase quality? Evidence from the US airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    6. Kaukin, Andrey (Каукин, Андрей), 2018. "Diagnosis of the Growth Model of the Russian Air Transportation Market: Bottlenecks and Directions of Development [Диагностика Модели Роста Российского Рынка Авиаперевозок: Узкие Места И Направлени," Working Papers 061830, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    7. Philip G. Gayle, 2013. "On the Efficiency of Codeshare Contracts between Airlines: Is Double Marginalization Eliminated?," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 244-273, November.
    8. Federico Ciliberto & Jonathan W. Williams, 2010. "Limited Access to Airport Facilities and Market Power in the Airline Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(3), pages 467-495.
    9. Stephen Martin, 2012. "Market Structure and Market Performance," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 40(2), pages 87-108, March.
    10. Gaurab Aryal & Federico Ciliberto & Benjamin T Leyden, 2022. "Coordinated Capacity Reductions and Public Communication in the Airline Industry [Exchangees of Cost Information in the Airline Industry]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(6), pages 3055-3084.
    11. 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.
    12. Somnath Das, 2019. "Effect of Merger on Market Price and Product Quality: American and US Airways," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 55(3), pages 339-374, November.
    13. Yahua Zhang & David Round, 2009. "Policy Implications of the Effects of Concentration and Multimarket Contact in China’s Airline Market," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 34(4), pages 307-326, June.
    14. Clougherty, Joseph A., 2004. "Integrating Industrial Organization and International Business to Explain the Cross-National Domestic Airline Merger Phenomenon," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 19, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    15. Bontemps, Christian & Remmy, Kevin & Wei, Jiangyu, 2021. "Ex-post evaluation of the American Airlines-US Airways merger: a structural approach," TSE Working Papers 21-1258, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    16. Azar, José & Schmalz, Martin & Tecu, Isabel, 2017. "Anti-Competitive Effects of Common Ownership," IESE Research Papers D/1169, IESE Business School.
    17. Sophia Li & Joe Mazur & Yongjoon Park & James Roberts & Andrew Sweeting & Jun Zhang, 2022. "Repositioning and market power after airline mergers," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 53(1), pages 166-199, March.
    18. Philip G. Gayle & Ying Lin, 2021. "Cost Pass‐Through In Commercial Aviation: Theory And Evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(2), pages 803-828, April.
    19. Chi‐Hyon Lee & Manuela N. Hoehn‐Weiss & Samina Karim, 2021. "Competing both ways: How combining Porter's low‐cost and focus strategies hurts firm performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(12), pages 2218-2244, December.
    20. Gayle, Philip G. & Brown, Dave, 2014. "Airline strategic alliances in overlapping markets: Should policymakers be concerned?," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 243-256.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    merger simulations; airlines; cournot; econometrics; industrial organization; cost estimation; demand estimation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
    • L44 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Antitrust Policy and Public Enterprise, Nonprofit Institutions, and Professional Organizations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:84395. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.