Ito, Noriko, 1964- (2001) The economic regulation of the UK airport industry. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The UK airport industry faced regulatory reform following the 1986 Airports Act. The regulatory reform not only included privatisation of the then nationalised British Airports Authority, but also changed the airports that used to be directly owned and managed by local authorities into autonomous pics. As a result, the industry includes four categories of institutional arrangement for the airports in the UK, i. e., (1) privatised airports with price regulation, (2) privatised airports without price regulation, (3) a local authority airport plc with price regulation, and (4) local authority airports plc without price regulation. The regulatory reform involves the imposition of price cap regulation on 'designated' airports' average airport charge levels. In this thesis focus is placed upon the predictions of outcome changes in this industry by the regulatory reform. The framework of the analyses is based on applied microeconomics, particularly on the theory of regulation. The predictions regarding the airport charges rebalancing effect and productive efficiency are accompanied by empirical analyses as to finding any performance changes. Predictions and empirical analyses were carried out mainly with regard to (1) allocative efficiency in price rebalancing and (2) technical efficiency in production. The price regulation's constraint form is the 'Average Revenue Approach' and some economists suggest this leads to efficiency distortion. 'Designated' airports' price cap constraint uses only the passenger numbers to 'average' the level of total airport charge revenue. The thesis shows that this approach would produce a different outcome from the general outcome predicted through a typical 'Average Revenue Approach' using both a simple model and interdependency demand model, followed by an empirical analysis using price ratio data. As to productive efficiency, after predictions of the outcome I used Data Envelopment Analysis to test efficiency scores in (A) the then nationalised British Airports Authority/privatised BAA as time series, and (B) private airports and local authority airports after the reform as a panel comparison.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Airports -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Airports -- Prices -- Great Britain, Airports -- Economic aspects -- Great Britain, Trade regulation -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century
Date:	May 2001
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Warwick Business School
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Waddams, Catherine
Sponsors:	Keiō Gijuku Daigaku [Keiō University]
Extent:	x, 254 leaves
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/3971

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