An assessment of Nash equilibria in the airline industry
Pre-print, Working paper: We study competition in the U.S. airline industry relaxing the Nash equilibrium assumption that airlines are able to predict perfectly the behavior of their competitors. We assess empirically whether an equilibrium is more likely to occur if it is the unique rationalizable outcome. We find that equilibria of short distance routes with high traffic and low concentration are the most fragile, and low-cost companies appear detrimental to their occurrence. Our analysis is applied to the measurement of welfare gains from firms’ entry, and to the characterization of the relevant market when some products are unobserved.
Author(s)
Alexandra Belova, Philippe Gagnepain, Stéphane Gauthier
Date of publication
- 2020
Keywords JEL
Keywords
- Welfare analysis
- Airline industry
- Structural model
- Cournot competition
- Nash equilibrium
- Rationalizability
- Relevant market
Internal reference
- PSE Working Papers n°2020-53
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1