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Hub Premium, Airport Dominance and Market Power in the European Airline Industry

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Using evidence from an original dataset of more than 12 million fares, this study sheds light on two issues relating to the pricing behaviour of the main European airlines: 1) the extent to which an airline’s dominant position at the origin airport, at the route and the city-pair level affects the airlines’ market power; 2) whether fares follow a monotonic time path consistent with the pursuing of an inter-temporal price discrimination strategy. Our estimates reveal that enjoying a dominant position within a route is conducive to higher fares, possibly because of the limited size of many “natural monopoly” routes that facilitate the incumbent’s engagement in a limit pricing strategy. On the contrary, a larger share within a city-pair does not seem to facilitate the exercise of market power, thereby suggesting the existence of a large degree of substitutability between the routes in a city-pair.

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  • Claudio A. Piga & Enrico Bachis, 2007. "Hub Premium, Airport Dominance and Market Power in the European Airline Industry," Discussion Paper Series 2007_11, Department of Economics, Loughborough University, revised Apr 2007.
    • Handle: RePEc:lbo:lbowps:2007_11
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    8. Masood Kiarashrad & Seyed Hamid Reza Pasandideh & Mohammad Mohammadi, 2021. "A mixed-integer nonlinear optimization model for integrated flight scheduling, fleet assignment, and ticket pricing in competitive market," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(5), pages 596-607, October.
    9. Silva, Thiago Christiano & Dias, Felipe A.M. & dos Reis, Vinicius E. & Tabak, Benjamin M., 2022. "The role of network topology in competition and ticket pricing in air transportation: Evidence from Brazil," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 601(C).
    10. Oliveira, Marcus V.R. & Oliveira, Alessandro V.M., 2018. "What drives effective competition in the airline industry? An empirical model of city-pair market concentration," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 165-175.
    11. Masood Kiarashrad & Seyed Hamid Reza Pasandideh & Mohammad Mohammadi, 2021. "Identifying and prioritizing the essential factors on ticket pricing strategy in a local market based on empirical study: Iranian domestic market," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(1), pages 76-87, February.
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    13. Bendinelli, William E. & Bettini, Humberto F.A.J. & Oliveira, Alessandro V.M., 2016. "Airline delays, congestion internalization and non-price spillover effects of low cost carrier entry," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 39-52.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    on-line pricing; price discrimination; dispersion; yield management.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L93 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Air Transportation

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