published_or_final_version / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning

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This thesis is concerned with measuring and explaining the productive efficiency of firms or organizations. In particular, the study compares three alternative methods of measuring efficiency, namely, the deterministic frontier method, the stochastic frontier method, and the data envelopment analysis method (DEA). The dissertation consists of two parts. In Part I, the relative merits of the three methods are discussed and evaluated through a Monte Carlo study under certain known conditions. The study focuses on the effects of exogenous variables on efficiency estimates. The results show that the stochastic frontier method generally produces better efficiency estimates than the other two methods. The DEA, however, has a slight advantage in cases where there are weak input substitution and large variations in input variables. In Part II, the three methods are examined empirically through their applications to a panel of 19 railways in OECD countries and a panel of 36 international airlines. Comparison of the three sets of efficiency estimates confirms that on average the stochastic frontier method yields higher efficiency estimates than the other two methods, as indicated by the Monte Carlo results. The efficiency estimates by the two parametric methods are highly correlated, whereas there are considerable differences between the DEA estimates and those from the parametric methods. This is also consistent with the Monte Carlo results. By comparing the alternative efficiency estimates in the two applications, it is found that there is less discrepancy among the three sets of efficiency estimates in the airline case than in the railway case. This can be partly attributed to the fact that there are fewer variations in the operating environments in the airline case than in the railway case. The simulation results in Part I provide some general guidelines regarding the relative merits of the three alternative methods under certain known conditions. The two applications of the three methods in Part II serve as examples of how these three methods can be applied to practical problems where no a priori knowledge of either the production technology nor the efficiency profile exists. They illustrate some of the problems that may be encountered in empirical applications.

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The ticket distribution industry is changing rapidly. The traditional travel distribution chain comprised airlines, travel agents, and computer reservation systems (CRSs). With the current migration of travel distribution to the Internet, the way in which these actors interact has been radically altered. / After deregulation, the airlines' dependence on travel agents and CRSs led to high commission and booking fees respectively. The Internet now offers airlines a means to directly distribute their product to the travelling public with minimal expense. The airlines are eagerly shifting as many of their distribution activities as possible to different forms of web-based distribution, hoping to bypass both travel agents and CRSs. This has allowed them to reduce the commission fees they pay to travel agents. Travel agents too are going online, competing vigorously with the airlines. The combined effect of these (r)evolutions has put the airlines firmly in charge of their own distribution system. / Any such a fundamental change in a sector of industry is bound to raise anticompetitive concerns, especially for those who stand to lose the most. These concerns are at the centre of this thesis. After their examination and evaluation, I conclude that anticompetitive concerns do indeed exist and that the regulatory or antitrust authorities have the unenviable task of preserving competition, not competitors, in a new and rapidly evolving market.

Regulation in its generic sense has existed for a very long time in different forms, with different aims and different problems of accountability, but the study of competition regulation by a Government agency has perhaps become fashionable only in recent years. This thesis consists of two leading themes. First, it will contend that, whilst the market system has been seriously underestimated as a social institution to the extent that it should be left to operate and organise itself where that is possible, it is at the same time not always self-regulating. Residual intervention by the State or its agencies will remain necessary in strategic cases, either to protect individual autonomy and choice, or to correct failures of the market system. The question is simply more or less regulation. Secondly, and on that premise, competition regulation must be distinguished into economic regulation and antitrust regulation because the relationship between them is inversely proportional: the more intense economic regulation is, the less important antitrust regulation becomes. By implication then, economic liberalisation or deregulation must be accompanied by a robust framework of antitrust regulation to ensure that the conditions of sustainable competition are not threatened by anti-competitive practices. Conditions of sustainable competition are thus critical for market contestability. For many years, domestic and international airline competition has been the subject of comprehensive regulation. With the passage of time, however, the thinking has changed and, no doubt, liberal policies and practices will continue to find expression in future political and economic sentiments. The responsibility for regulating airlines in the United Kingdom falls on the Civil Aviation Authority, which has played a formidable role in transforming the policy of heavy regulation into minimal regulation, although much of that regulatory landscape has now been altered with the advent of the Single European Aviation Market. The experiences of, both, the CAA and the new SEATNI provide an illuminating account of the evolutionary process of regulating airline competition, that from economic to antitrust regulation.

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Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2004.