A dynamic oligopoly game of the US airline industry: Estimation and policy experiments

Victor Aguirregabiria () and Chun-Yu Ho

Journal of Econometrics, 2012, vol. 168, issue 1, 156-173

Abstract: This paper studies the contribution of demand, costs, and strategic factors to the adoption of hub-and-spoke networks in the US airline industry. Our results are based on the estimation of a dynamic game of network competition using data from the Airline Origin and Destination Survey with information on quantities, prices, and entry and exit decisions for every airline company in the routes between the 55 largest US cities. As methodological contributions of the paper, we propose and apply a method to reduce the dimension of the state space in dynamic games, and a procedure to deal with the problem of multiple equilibria when implementing counterfactual experiments. Our empirical results show that the most important factor to explain the adoption of hub-and-spoke networks is that the sunk cost of entry in a route declines importantly with the number of cities that the airline connects from the origin and destination airports of the route. For some carriers, the entry deterrence motive is the second most important factor to explain hub-and-spoke networks.

Keywords: Airline industry; Hub-and-spoke networks; Industry dynamics; Estimation of dynamic games; Network competition; Counterfactual experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C10 C35 C63 C73 L10 L13 L93 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (69)

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Related works:
Working Paper: A Dynamic Oligopoly Game of the US Airline Industry: Estimation and Policy Experiments (2009)
Working Paper: A Dynamic Oligopoly Game of the US Airline Industry: Estimation and Policy Experiments (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:econom:v:168:y:2012:i:1:p:156-173

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconom.2011.09.013

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