[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/96-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price discrimination in the airline market: the effect of market concentration

Author

Listed:
  • Joanna Stavins
Abstract
Economic theory suggests that a monopolist can price discriminate more successfully than can a perfectly competitive firm. Most real-life markets, however, fall somewhere in between the two extremes. What happens as the market becomes more competitive: Does price discrimination increase or decrease? This paper examines how price discrimination changes with market concentration in the airline market. The paper uses data on prices and ticket restrictions across various routes within the United States, controlling for distances and airport gate restrictions. Price discrimination is found to increase as the markets become more competitive.

Suggested Citation

  • Joanna Stavins, 1996. "Price discrimination in the airline market: the effect of market concentration," Working Papers 96-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:96-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp1996/wp96_7.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp1996/wp96_7.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gale, Ian L & Holmes, Thomas J, 1993. "Advance-Purchase Discounts and Monopoly Allocation of Capacity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 135-146, March.
    2. Hurdle, Gloria J, et al, 1989. "Concentration, Potential Entry, and Performance in the Airline Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 119-139, December.
    3. David R. Graham & Daniel P. Kaplan & David S. Sibley, 1983. "Efficiency and Competition in the Airline Industry," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(1), pages 118-138, Spring.
    4. Morrison, Steven A & Winston, Clifford, 1990. "The Dynamics of Airline Pricing and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 389-393, May.
    5. Borenstein, Severin & Rose, Nancy L, 1994. "Competition and Price Dispersion in the U.S. Airline Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 653-683, August.
    6. Brueckner, Jan K & Spiller, Pablo T, 1994. "Economies of Traffic Density in the Deregulated Airline Industry," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(2), pages 379-415, October.
    7. Gale, I., 1992. "Price Dispersion in a Market with Advance Purchases," Working papers 9214, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    8. Holmes, Thomas J, 1989. "The Effects of Third-Degree Price Discrimination in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 244-250, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Alberto A. Gaggero & Claudio A. Piga, 2011. "Airline Market Power and Intertemporal Price Dispersion," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(4), pages 552-577, December.
    2. Angela Stefania Bergantino & Claudia Capozza, 2015. "Airline Pricing Behavior Under Limited Inter‐Modal Competition," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 700-713, January.
    3. Wei, Fangwu & Grubesic, Tony H., 2016. "The pain persists: Exploring the spatiotemporal trends in air fares and itinerary pricing in the United States, 2002–2013," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 107-121.
    4. Brueckner, Jan K. & Lee, Darin & Singer, Ethan S., 2013. "Airline competition and domestic US airfares: A comprehensivereappraisal," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-17.
    5. Yahua Zhang & David Round, 2009. "Policy Implications of the Effects of Concentration and Multimarket Contact in China’s Airline Market," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 34(4), pages 307-326, June.
    6. Marc Möller & Makoto Watanabe, 2016. "Competition in the presence of individual demand uncertainty," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(2), pages 273-292, May.
    7. Zou, Bo & Hansen, Mark, 2014. "Flight delay impact on airfare and flight frequency: A comprehensive assessment," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 54-74.
    8. Severin Borenstein, 1992. "The Evolution of U.S. Airline Competition," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 45-73, Spring.
    9. Luttmann, Alexander, 2019. "Evidence of directional price discrimination in the U.S. airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 291-329.
    10. Ramnath K. Chellappa & Raymond G. Sin & S. Siddarth, 2011. "Price Formats as a Source of Price Dispersion: A Study of Online and Offline Prices in the Domestic U.S. Airline Markets," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 83-98, March.
    11. David Gillen & Tim Hazledine, 2016. "Pricing of Regional Airline Services in Australia and New Zealand, 2011–2015," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 35(2), pages 87-98, June.
    12. Siegert, Caspar & Ulbricht, Robert, 2020. "Dynamic oligopoly pricing: Evidence from the airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    13. Luttmann, Alexander & Gaggero, Alberto A, 2020. "Purchase discounts and travel premiums during holiday periods: Evidence from the airline industry," MPRA Paper 104863, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Kristopher Gerardi & Adam Hale Shapiro, 2007. "The effects of competition on price dispersion in the airline industry: a panel analysis," Working Papers 07-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    15. Andrés Martínez, María-Encarnación & Alfaro Navarro, José-Luis & Trinquecoste, Jean-François, 2017. "The effect of destination type and travel period on the behavior of the price of airline tickets," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 37-43.
    16. Claudio Agostini, 2005. "El Mercado de Transporte Aéreo: Lecciones para Chile de una Revisión de la Literatura," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv163, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    17. Marc Möller & Makoto Watanabe, 2016. "Market Structure and Advance Selling," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-020/VII, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Gil, Ricard & Kim, Myongjin, 2021. "Does competition increase quality? Evidence from the US airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    19. Giaume, Stephanie & Guillou, Sarah, 2004. "Price discrimination and concentration in European airline markets," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 305-310.
    20. Gillen, David & Hazledine, Tim, 2015. "The economics and geography of regional airline services in six countries," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 129-136.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Airlines;

    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:fip:fedbwp:96-7. 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 Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.html .

    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.