Code-sharing in the U.S. airline industry.

摘要

This dissertation consists of two essays that address code-sharing alliances in the U.S. domestic airline industry.;The first essay examines the economic impact of code-sharing using data from the complementary code-sharing agreement between Southwest and ATA Airlines. This code-share agreement is found to decrease air fares and increase passenger volumes for incumbent firms, while increasing both consumer and producer surplus on code-shared routes to and from the Denver airport. In addition, these markets are found to exhibit characteristics of Bertrand competition, as opposed to previous findings of the less competitive Cournot result in international markets and in other domestic U.S. markets.;The second essay employs three alternative econometric models (Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLIMM), Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) and Transition Models (TM)) analyze factors that determine whether individual routes remain in or leave a code-share agreement. The code-share alliance between Continental and America West Airlines is used as the case study for this analysis. Empirical results show that routes with higher flight frequencies and higher yields lead to a higher probability of remaining in the code-share agreement. Alliance firms tend to code-share routes where the origin, connecting or destination airport is one of their hub cities or the route is a vacation route. Airport congestion and high route concentration are found to be important barriers that limit use of code-sharing.