Air-rail cooperation: Partnership level, market structure and welfare implications

•This paper builds a theoretical model to study different air-rail cooperation schemes.•We investigate two possible air-rail partnerships: a domestic partnership between domestic airline and rail operator, and an international partnership between foreign airline and rail operator.•We find that the cooperation level when both partnerships coexist is lower than those when only one partnership exists.•We then show that the equilibrium partnership scenarios, as well as the comparisons of social welfare under different partnership scenarios, depend on the pre-investment air-rail service quality.•We further apply our model to the real-life case of Strasbourg-Paris-Dubai market.

We build a theoretical model to study different air-rail cooperation scenarios. We investigate two possible air-rail partnerships between a rail operator and either a domestic airline or a foreign airline. When a partnership is formed, an investment to improve the air-rail connecting service is allowed at a cost before the service is launched. We find that the cooperation level, the equilibrium partnership scenarios when air-rail cooperation is exclusive or non-exclusive, as well as the comparisons of social welfare under different partnership scenarios, all depend on the pre-investment quality of air-rail service compared with the quality of air-air service. We further apply our model to the real-life case of Strasbourg-Paris-Dubai market, showing that other factors, such as price sensitivity of demand, horizontal differentiation between air and rail, and asymmetries in partnership investment costs, also affect cooperation level.