Vertical differentiation and airline alliances: The effect of antitrust immunity

This paper explores the impact of granting antitrust immunity (ATI) to airline alliances in a novel and realistic framework characterized by vertically-differentiated air services. Our theoretical model suggests that non-ATI alliances result in higher quality services at higher fares, whereas granti...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Fageda, Xavier, 1975-, Flores-Fillol, Ricardo, Lin, Ming Hsin
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/173338
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/173338
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Transport aeri
Cooperació empresarial
Competència econòmica
Oligopolis
Commercial aeronautics
Enterprise cooperation
Competition
Oligopolies
Descripción
Sumario:This paper explores the impact of granting antitrust immunity (ATI) to airline alliances in a novel and realistic framework characterized by vertically-differentiated air services. Our theoretical model suggests that non-ATI alliances result in higher quality services at higher fares, whereas granting ATI produces the opposite effect. Using data on the transatlantic market over the period 2010-2017, our theoretical findings on service quality are empirically confirmed. We also relate our theoretical predictions on fares to the empirical results in Brueckner and Singer (2019). Our results indicate that alliances (ATI and non-ATI) concentrate a higher proportion of frequencies on high-quality routings, although airport congestion could mitigate this effect.