Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Publication Title

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Keywords

airline deregulation, predatory pricing, airline predation

Abstract

Two large bodies of literature bearing on the competitive health of the deregulated airlines are in sharp conflict: (1) the volumes of judicial and academic output to the effect that the phenomenon of predatory pricing is, as a practical matter, impossible; and (2) the similarly massive body of industry-specific theory and empirical evidence that predation not only occurs in airline markets, but has been a key tool to preserve market power held by the surviving legacy carriers. This article seeks to establish from the latter that the former is a poor basis for policy, especially if there is nothing really so special about airline markets as to make predation uniquely likely there. This article therefore offers a basically derivative, but essential, empiricism to the largely theoretical predation debate.

Volume

74

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