Price Cap Regulation of Airports: A New Approach

Airports are typically monopolistic providers of aeronautical services. Hence, the widespread privatization of airports within the last 20 years has in general been accompanied by some form of price regulation of aeronautical services. A great deal of attention has been given to the issue of whether the aeronautical price cap should be based upon revenues from both aeronautical and commercial services (the “single-till” approach) or revenues from aeronautical services only (the “dual-till” approach). However, each of these regulatory schemes will in general lead to regulated prices that are Pareto inefficient. This paper presents a price capping scheme that systematically exploits the potential Pareto improvements available under either the single-till or dual-till regimes.