Spatial competition for passengers and its influence on efficiency of European airports

This study deals with estimation of European airports' efficiency values and their interrelation with a level of competition pressure for passengers among airports. In this paper we present a new adaptive definition of airport's catchment area. Using this definition we develop an indicator of a level of competition pressure, based on overlapping of airport's potential catchment areas. We apply a stochastic frontier model to estimate efficiencies of airports. The method includes the construction of a production frontier for a sample of airports and estimation of individual airports' efficiency values as distances from this frontier. We use a classic production approach to airport activities, where an airport enterprise uses labour resources (a number of employees) and infrastructure (a number of runways, gates, check-ins and parking spaces) for transportation of passengers. Also we use a re-sampling jack-knife technique to test the reliability of airports' efficiencies estimates. We investigate a relationship between a level of competition pressure and airports' operation efficiencies in case of imperfect spatial competition for passengers.