IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/retrec/v72y2018icp49-64.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of intermodal competition on the pricing behaviour of a railway company: Evidence from the German case

Author

Listed:
  • Gremm, Cornelia

Abstract

The market for public intercity railway services still belongs to monopolistic companies in many European countries without considerable intramodal competition. Therefore, intermodal competition is of particular importance for this market. In this paper, we analyse the intermodal competition between intercity buses and railways. In particular, we analyse the price-setting behaviour of the German railway company DB Fernverkehr AG in different competitive situations. Starting from the set of all long-distance connections between the larger German cities with daily train services, the ones with bus services are identified and frequencies are counted. In our analysis, we combine bus and railway data as well as general transport and socioeconomic data. A two-step cluster analysis is used to create homogenous transport markets. Within these clusters, a count data regression analysis is applied in order to analyse the number of special prices offered by DB Fernverkehr AG, as these are the most flexible price instruments of DB. Our results show, among others, that the railway budget prices are lower on routes with intermodal competition compared to monopolistic routes.

Suggested Citation

  • Gremm, Cornelia, 2018. "The effect of intermodal competition on the pricing behaviour of a railway company: Evidence from the German case," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 49-64.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:retrec:v:72:y:2018:i:c:p:49-64
    DOI: 10.1016/j.retrec.2018.11.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0739885917303207
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.retrec.2018.11.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dobruszkes, Frédéric & Dehon, Catherine & Givoni, Moshe, 2014. "Does European high-speed rail affect the current level of air services? An EU-wide analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 461-475.
    2. Dobruszkes, Frédéric, 2011. "High-speed rail and air transport competition in Western Europe: A supply-oriented perspective," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 870-879, November.
    3. Wan, Yulai & Ha, Hun-Koo & Yoshida, Yuichiro & Zhang, Anming, 2016. "Airlines’ reaction to high-speed rail entries: Empirical study of the Northeast Asian market," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 532-557.
    4. Bergantino, Angela S. & Capozza, Claudia & Capurso, Mauro, 2015. "The impact of open access on intra- and inter-modal rail competition. A national level analysis in Italy," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 77-86.
    5. Angela S. Bergantino & Claudia Capozza & Mauro Capurso, 2018. "Pricing strategies: who leads and who follows in the air and rail passenger markets in Italy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(46), pages 4937-4953, October.
    6. Patricia Perennes, 2014. "Intermodal competition: studying the pricing strategy of the French rail monopoly," Post-Print hal-01272287, HAL.
    7. Alderighi, Marco & Cento, Alessandro & Nijkamp, Peter & Rietveld, Piet, 2012. "Competition in the European aviation market: the entry of low-cost airlines," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 223-233.
    8. Bergantino, Angela S. & Capozza, Claudia & Capurso, Mauro, 2015. "The impact of open access on intra- and inter-modal rail competition. A national level analysis in Italy," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 77-86.
    9. Bergantino, Angela Stefania & Capozza, Claudia, 2015. "One price for all? Price discrimination and market captivity: Evidence from the Italian city-pair markets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 231-244.
    10. Wang, Kun & Xia, Wenyi & Zhang, Anming & Zhang, Qiong, 2018. "Effects of train speed on airline demand and price: Theory and empirical evidence from a natural experiment," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 99-130.
    11. Vigren, Andreas, 2017. "Competition in Swedish passenger railway: Entry in an open access market and its effect on prices," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 11, pages 49-59.
    12. Frédéric Dobruszkes, 2011. "High-speed rail and air transport competition in Western Europe: A supply-oriented perspective," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/96164, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Patricia Perennes, 2014. "Intermodal competition: studying the pricing strategy of the French rail monopoly," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01272287, HAL.
    14. Capozza, Claudia, 2016. "The effect of rail travel time on airline fares: First evidence from the Italian passenger market," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 18-24.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Avenali, Alessandro & Gregori, Martina & Reverberi, Pierfrancesco, 2023. "Intercity bus and rail services: Competition and welfare effects," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    2. Feng, Fenling & Zhang, Jiaqi & Liu, Chengguang, 2023. "Integrated pricing mechanism of China Railway Express whole-process logistics based on the Stackelberg game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 609(C).
    3. Rategh, Yalda & Tamannaei, Mohammad & Zarei, Hamid, 2022. "A game-theoretic approach to an oligopolistic transportation market: Coopetition between incumbent systems subject to the entrance threat of an HSR service," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 144-171.
    4. Gremm, Cornelia & Bälz, David & Corbo, Chris & Mitusch, Kay, 2019. "Intermodal competition between intercity buses and trains: A theoretical model," Working Paper Series in Economics 135, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    5. Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC), 2023. "Guide. Competition against inflation: How competition and efficient regulation help protect the purchasing power of consumers," Colección Estudios de Mercado G-2022-02_ENG, Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC).
    6. Thierry Blayac & Patrice Bougette, 2023. "What can be Expected from Mergers After Deregulation? The Case of the Long-Distance Bus Industry in France," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 62(1), pages 63-97, February.
    7. Mohammad Tamannaei & Hamid Zarei & Sajede Aminzadegan, 2021. "A Game-Theoretic Approach to the Freight Transportation Pricing Problem in the Presence of Intermodal Service Providers in a Competitive Market," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 123-173, March.
    8. Jaroslav Mašek & Vladimíra Štefancová & Jaroslav Mazanec & Petra Juránková, 2023. "The Classification of Application Users Supporting and Facilitating Travel Mobility Using Two-Step Cluster Analysis," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-16, May.
    9. Gaggero, Alberto A. & Piazza, Giovanni, 2021. "Multilayer networks and route entry into the airline industry: Evidence from the U.S. domestic market," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

    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. Min Su & Weixin Luan & Zeyang Li & Shulin Wan & Zhenchao Zhang, 2019. "Evolution and Determinants of an Air Transport Network: A Case Study of the Chinese Main Air Transport Network," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Ma, Wenliang & Wang, Qiang & Yang, Hangjun & Zhang, Anming & Zhang, Yahua, 2019. "Effects of Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail on air travel: Passenger types, airline groups and tacit collusion," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 64-76.
    3. Zhang, Rui & Johnson, Daniel & Zhao, Weiming & Nash, Chris, 2019. "Competition of airline and high-speed rail in terms of price and frequency: Empirical study from China," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 8-18.
    4. Bergantino, Angela Stefania & Madio, Leonardo, 2020. "Intermodal competition and substitution. HSR versus air transport: Understanding the socio-economic determinants of modal choice," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. 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.
    6. Su, Min & Luan, Weixin & Sun, Tianyao, 2019. "Effect of high-speed rail competition on airlines’ intertemporal price strategies," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 1-1.
    7. Borsati, Mattia & Albalate, Daniel, 2020. "On the modal shift from motorway to high-speed rail: evidence from Italy," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 145-164.
    8. Asep Yayat Nurhidayat & Hera Widyastuti & Sutikno & Dwi Phalita Upahita, 2023. "Research on Passengers’ Preferences and Impact of High-Speed Rail on Air Transport Demand," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-26, February.
    9. Daniel Albalate & Mattia Borsati, 2019. "“On the modal shift from motorway to high-speed rail: evidence from Italy”," IREA Working Papers 201910, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Jun 2019.
    10. Beria, Paolo & Lunkar, Vardhman & Tolentino, Samuel & Pařil, Vilém & Kvasnička, Michal, 2023. "Long-distance rail in Europe: Comparing the forms of head-on competition across Europe," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    11. Zhang, Anming & Wan, Yulai & Yang, Hangjun, 2019. "Impacts of high-speed rail on airlines, airports and regional economies: A survey of recent research," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 1-19.
    12. Ren, Xiaohang & Zeng, Gudian & Dong, Kangyin & Wang, Kun, 2023. "How does high-speed rail affect tourism development? The case of the Sichuan-Chongqing Economic Circle," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    13. Angela S. Bergantino & Claudia Capozza & Mauro Capurso, 2018. "Pricing strategies: who leads and who follows in the air and rail passenger markets in Italy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(46), pages 4937-4953, October.
    14. Bernardo, Valeria & Fageda, Xavier, 2020. "Impacts of competition on connecting travelers: Evidence from the transatlantic aviation market," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 141-151.
    15. Capozza, Claudia, 2016. "The effect of rail travel time on airline fares: First evidence from the Italian passenger market," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 18-24.
    16. Chen, Zhe & Wang, Zhengli & Jiang, Hai, 2019. "Analyzing the heterogeneous impacts of high-speed rail entry on air travel in China: A hierarchical panel regression approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 86-98.
    17. Wang, Wei & Sun, Huijun & Wu, Jianjun, 2020. "How does the decision of high-speed rail operator affect social welfare? Considering competition between high-speed rail and air transport," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 1-15.
    18. Jiang, Changmin & Wang, Chunan, 2021. "High-speed rail pricing: Implications for social welfare," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    19. Liu, Shuli & Wan, Yulai & Ha, Hun-Koo & Yoshida, Yuichiro & Zhang, Anming, 2019. "Impact of high-speed rail network development on airport traffic and traffic distribution: Evidence from China and Japan," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 115-135.
    20. Carlos Augusto Olarte Bacares & Julien Brunel & Damien Sigaud, 2019. "Influence of the evolution of high-speed railway infrastructure on the success of Italian liberalization," Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, , vol. 20(2), pages 113-137, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intermodal competition; Intercity railway; Intercity buses; Pricing behaviour; Deregulation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L43 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Legal Monopolies and Regulation or Deregulation
    • D41 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Perfect Competition
    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly

    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:eee:retrec:v:72:y:2018:i:c:p:49-64. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620614/description#description .

    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.