In this paper we study the impact of competition on the provision of quality in the US airline industry. Using changes in competition triggered by LCC entry and airline mergers, we find that an increase in competition increases the provision of quality of major incumbent and non-merging airlines...

The paper investigates the construction of a low cost airline network by analyzing JetBlue Airways' entry decisions into nonstop domestic U.S. airport-pair markets between 2000 and 2009. Adopting duration models with time-varying covariates, we find that JetBlue consistently avoided concentrated...

Based on two strands of theoretical research, this paper provides new evidence on how fares are jointly affected by in-flight seat availability and purchasing date. As capacity-driven theories predict, it emerges that fares monotonically and substantially increase with the flights occupancy...

This paper studies incumbent price response to entry by low-cost carriers in the U.S. airline industry. I find that legacy carrier incumbents decrease their mean airfare, 10th percentile airfare, and 90th percentile airfare following entry by a low-cost carrier. Airfares decrease by a larger...

We investigate the effect of competition on price dispersion in the airline industry. Using panel data from 1993 to 2008, we find a non-monotonic effect of competition on price dispersion. An increase in competition is associated with greater price dispersion in concentrated markets but is...

This paper examines the impact of labor unions on firms' quality provisions through the lens of the U.S. airline industry. Leveraging quarterly carrier-route level data on flight frequencies and on-time performance from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics from 1993 to 2019, our...

Using data on four large mergers in the U.S. airline industry, we find consistent and significant effects of mergers on peripheral markets (i.e. those in which neither of the merging firms currently competes). Although such markets are rarely the focus of antitrust analysis, we demonstrate that...

This paper analyzes the responses of incumbent hub-and-spoke carriers to low cost carrier (LCC) entry on routes served to and from their hubs over the past decade. Our analysis finds that the typical price and capacity response by incumbent hub-and-spoke carriers to LCC entry has been fairly...

This paper documents the growth of low cost carriers (LCCs) in the U.S. airline industry since 1990. By estimating simple probit models, we quantify the market characteristics which have influenced nonstop LCC entry in 351 city-pair markets over the past decade. We confirm that pre-entry market...