Abstract U.S. commercial airports are public infrastructure owned and operated by government authorities. If so, do public commercial airports compete with each other? In this study, we investigated airport competition by applying the data of 59 U.S. hub airports from 2009 to 2019 in a Cliff-Ord typed spatial model. The model includes two modules: the first module captures the impact of neighboring airports on the airport's output with a spatial lag dependent variable, while the second module considers the bias resulting from spatial autoregressive error term. The results suggest that the airports' outputs are spatially and negatively dependent; namely, an increase in the outputs of neighboring airports leads to a decrease in the output of an airport. This indicates the existence of airport competition. In addition, we found that the outputs of airports governed by city and state are greater than those of ones governed by the port/airport authority after controlling for all other factors.
Highlights U.S. airports' outputs are spatially and negatively dependent. An increase in the outputs of neighboring airports leads to a decrease in the output of an airport. U.S. airports compete with each other on output although they are owned by governments. The outputs of legacy airlines' hubs are greater than those of the other hubs after controlling for all other factors.
Spatial dependence and competition between U.S. airports
2022-12-27
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Luftverkehr - German airports between competition and cooperation
Online Contents | 2000
|The lehigh airports competition
Engineering Index Backfile | 1930
Verkehrsplanung: Airports in competition
Online Contents | 2003
|The lehigh airports competition
Engineering Index Backfile | 1930
|Airport competition – Regional airports losing ground to main airports
Elsevier | 2009
|