Liberalisation and efficiency in international air transport

This paper sets out to compare the economic and technical efficiency of international air transport companies, within the new liberalisation framework that characterises the period of 1996–2000. For this purpose, two stochastic frontiers are estimated, one for cost function, the other for production function. From these estimations we obtain indexes for, respectively, economic and technical efficiency. Our evidence suggests that the benefits of increasing competition in terms of efficiency, is being large for the Asian companies.