The Price Effects of Codeshare Products Under the United-Continental Airline Merger
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
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Balasubramanian, Vinayak
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics
- Abstract
- The existence of operational inefficiency in the U.S. airline industry, combined with rising costs and financial problems, has long prompted airlines to find ways to consolidate through mergers, and to cooperate through codeshare agreements and alliances. While the price and competition effects of mergers and codeshare agreements are well documented by existing research, there is comparatively little literature over a merger’s impact on the codeshare products between the merging firms, and on markets abundant in codeshare passengers. This paper seeks to fill this research gap by analyzing price data for 75 million passengers from four consecutive quarters before and four consecutive quarters after the United-Continental Airline merger. The results show a statistically significant price increase in former codeshare products in markets, and a statistically significant price decrease for codeshare products in highly concentrated markets. The data also shows a statistically significant price increase for non-concentrated markets that are abundant in codeshare passengers, and a statistically significant price decrease highly concentrated markets that are abundant in codeshare passengers. These findings indicate that antitrust authorities should pay more attention to markets that aren’t concentrated when making future merger decisions, particularly as the number of passengers taking advantage of codeshare tickets continues to increase.
- Date of publication
- spring 2014
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: None
- Advisor
- Pires, Tiago
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 41
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