Estimating the market power of airports in their catchment areas -- a Europe-wide approach

It is often argued that market regulation should only be applied to airports with significant degrees of market power, to avoid regulatory costs to exceed respective benefits. However, the measurement of airport market power is not a trivial issue, not least given the wide range of different market segments airports operate in. The aim of this paper is to develop a methodology for the assessment of airport market power which can be applied to the European airports. First, the authors provide an overview of existing methodologies applied in empirical studies that try to assess the degrees of airport market power. It is found that, while the literature provides some very detailed assessments for specific airports, no comparative studies for a wider range of European airports, based on uniform and transparent criteria, has so far been undertaken. Therefore the authors develop a transparent modelling approach for the estimation of airport market power in the local passenger market segment, which requires detailed regional GDP data on NUTS 3 level, airport-region distances and flight supply on the airport level, as reported by the Official Airline Guide (OAG), as main input data. The authors show and discuss the results for the 50 largest European airports.

• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692311002067
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/09666923
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission from Elsevier
• Authors:
  • Maertens, Sven
• Publication Date: 2012-5

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 10-18
• Serial:
  • Journal of Transport Geography
  • Volume: 22
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0966-6923
  • Serial URL: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jtrangeo

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Airports; Market assessment; Methodology; Regulation
• Uncontrolled Terms: Comparative analysis
• Geographic Terms: Europe
• Subject Areas: Aviation; Economics; I10: Economics and Administration;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01372540
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jun 14 2012 10:56AM