US airport ownership, efficiency, and heterogeneity

Authors

Levent Kutlu, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow
Patrick McCarthy, Georgia Institute of Technology

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-2016

Abstract

All US commercial airports are in the public sector yet not all have the same ownership type. For medium and large hub US airports we use stochastic frontier analysis to analyze the efficiency differences for alternative airport ownership types. We find that while form of ownership may matter for cost efficiency, in general its effect is relatively small. Yet type of public sector ownership does have cost efficiency implications in certain environments. Further, when heterogeneity is not controlled, the results change substantially so that type of ownership matters much more which demonstrates the importance of controlling for cross section heterogeneity.

Comments

Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tre.2016.03.003

Recommended Citation

Kutlu, Levent, and Patrick McCarthy. “US Airport Ownership, Efficiency, and Heterogeneity.” Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 89 (May 1, 2016): 117–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tre.2016.03.003.

First Page

117

Last Page

132

Publication Title

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review

DOI

10.1016/j.tre.2016.03.003