Economics and Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

Demand uncertainty and capacity utilization in airlines

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2014

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between demand uncertainty—the key source of excess capacity—and capacity utilization in the US airline industry. We present a simple theoretical model that predicts that lower demand realizations are associated with higher demand volatility. This prediction is strongly supported by the results of estimating a panel GARCH framework that pools unique data on capacity utilization across different flights and over various departure dates. A one unit increase in the standard deviation of unexpected demand decreases capacity utilization by 21 percentage points. The estimation controls for unobserved time-invariant specific characteristics as well as for systematic demand fluctuations.

Comments

Copyright © 2013, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

https://rdcu.be/c3DZr

Publication Title

Empir Econ

DOI

10.1007/s00181-013-0725-2

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