Free Sky and Clouds of Restrictions

Piermartini, Roberta und Rousova, Linda (14. Juli 2009): Free Sky and Clouds of Restrictions. Münchener Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Beiträge (VWL) 2009-11

Abstract

An increasing percentage of trade occurs via air. However, air services are excluded from the WTO Agreement and, as a result, the aviation market is regulated by a plethora of Air Services Agreements. In this paper, we investigate the extent of discrimination -in terms of access to international air services- generated by this system. In particular, using recently available information on Air Services Agreements for 184 countries, we estimate the impact of international air services liberalization on air passenger flows. We find that increasing the degree of liberalization has a positive and significant effect. For instance, the higher degree of air services liberalization among countries of the European Economic Area (EEA) is estimated to account for approximately 30 per cent higher intra-EEA passenger traffic compared with countries that signed Open Skies-type agreements. Our results are robust to the use of several measures of liberalization as well as alternative estimation techniques that address potential problems of endogeneity, heteroscedasticity and data inaccuracy.

• Dokumententyp: Paper
• Publikationsform: Submitted Version
• Keywords: Air Services Agreements; Air services liberalization; Air passenger traffic; Regulatory quality.
• Fakultät: Volkswirtschaft ; Volkswirtschaft > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics ; Volkswirtschaft > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics > Internationaler Handel
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 300 Sozialwissenschaft, Soziologie ; 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 330 Wirtschaft
• JEL Classification: F15, L93, R48
• Sprache: Englisch

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