This paper analyzes rivalry between transport facilities in a model that includes two sources of horizontal differentiation: geographical space and departure time. We explore how both sources influence facility fees and the price of the service offered by downstream carriers. Travellers' costs include a fare, a transportation cost to the facility and a schedule delay cost, which captures the monetary cost of departing earlier or later than desired. One carrier operates at each facility and schedules a single departure time. The interactions in the facility-carrier model are represented as a sequential three-stage game in fees, times and fares with simultaneous choices at each stage. We find that duopolistic competition leads to an identical departure time across carriers when their operational cost does not vary with the time of day, but generally leads to distinct service times when this cost is time dependent. When a facility possesses a location advantage, it can set a higher fee and its downstream carrier can charge a higher fare. Departure time differentiation allows the facilities and their carrier to compete along an additional differentiation dimension that can reduce or strengthen the advantage in location. By incorporating the downstream carriers into the analysis, we also find that a higher per passenger commercial revenue at one facility induces a lower fee charged by both facilities to their carrier and a lower fare charged by both carriers at their departure facility, while a lower marginal operational cost for one carrier implies a higher fee at its departure facility, a lower fee at the other facility served by the rival carrier and a lower fare at both facilities.
Abstract:The effect of corruption on airport productive efficiency is analyzed using an unbalanced panel data of major European airports from 2003 to 2009. We first compute the residual (or net) variable factor productivity using the multilateral index number method and then apply robust cluster random effects model in order to evaluate the importance of corruption. We find strong evidence that corruption has negative impacts on airport operating efficiency; and the effects depend on the ownership form of the airport. The results suggest that airports under mixed public-private ownership with private majority achieve lower levels of efficiency when located in more corrupt countries. They even operate less efficiently than fully and/or majority government owned airports in high corruption environment. We control for economic regulation, competition level and other airports' characteristics. Our empirical results survive several robustness checks including different control variables, three alternative corruption measures: International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) corruption index, Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and Control of Corruption Index (CCI). The empirical findings have important policy implications for management and ownership structuring of airports operating in countries that suffer from higher levels of corruption.
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