TY - JOUR
T1 - Regulation, privatization, and airport charges
T2 - Panel data evidence from European airports
AU - Bilotkach, Volodymyr
AU - Clougherty, Joseph A.
AU - Mueller, Juergen
AU - Zhang, Anming
N1 - Funding Information:
lin, Hochschule Bremen, and Internationale Fachhochschule Bad Honnef) supported by the Federal Ministry of Research and Technology. The project involved the collection of data on a number of airports across Europe.8 The data obtained included information on airports’ annual basic operating results, such as total aeronautical revenue and non-aeronautical revenue, aircraft movements, number of passengers served, cargo transported, etc. Information on the institutional environment in which airports operate is also available—this includes the share of private ownership, as well as classification of airports by the type of regulation employed.9 The original dataset classifies airports as subject to cost-based regulation, price-cap regulation, and ex post regulation. Further, we are able to observe whether airports are subject to single-till or dual-till regulation. Table 1 illustrates the pertinent descriptive statistics for the variables employed in our estimations.
PY - 2012/8
Y1 - 2012/8
N2 - This paper examines the determinants of airport aeronautical charges by employing a unique panel dataset covering sixty-one European airports over an eighteen-year period. We are able to extend the literature on the role of airports as an essential element in transport infrastructure by offering the first analysis of the impact of different regulatory policies and privatization on airport charges in a panel data setting where fixed effects can be employed to mitigate endogeneity concerns. Our main empirical results indicate that aeronautical charges are lower at airports when single-till regulation is employed, when airports are privatized, and-tentatively-when ex post price regulation is applied. Furthermore, hub airports generally set higher aeronautical charges, and it appears that price-cap regulation and the presence of nearby airports do not affect aeronautical charges.
AB - This paper examines the determinants of airport aeronautical charges by employing a unique panel dataset covering sixty-one European airports over an eighteen-year period. We are able to extend the literature on the role of airports as an essential element in transport infrastructure by offering the first analysis of the impact of different regulatory policies and privatization on airport charges in a panel data setting where fixed effects can be employed to mitigate endogeneity concerns. Our main empirical results indicate that aeronautical charges are lower at airports when single-till regulation is employed, when airports are privatized, and-tentatively-when ex post price regulation is applied. Furthermore, hub airports generally set higher aeronautical charges, and it appears that price-cap regulation and the presence of nearby airports do not affect aeronautical charges.
KW - Airport charges
KW - Airports
KW - Hubs
KW - Privatization
KW - Regulation
KW - Single-till
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U2 - 10.1007/s11149-011-9172-1
DO - 10.1007/s11149-011-9172-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84862136403
VL - 42
SP - 73
EP - 94
JO - Journal of Regulatory Economics
JF - Journal of Regulatory Economics
SN - 0922-680X
IS - 1
ER -