The Evolution of the Airline Industry

(Paperback)

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Since the enactment of the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, questions that had been at the heart of the ongoing debate about the industry for eighty years gained a new intensity: Is there enough competition among airlines to ensure that passengers do not pay excessive fares Can an unregulated airline industry be profitable Is air travel safe In this book, Steven A. Morrison and Clifford Winston assert that all too often public discussion of the issues of airline competition, profitability, and safety take place without a firm understanding of the facts. The policy recommendations that emerge frequently ignore the long-run evolution of the industry and its capacity to solve its own problems. The authors identify the problems the industry faces, assess their severity and their underlying causes, and indicate whether government policy can play an effective role in improving performance. They also develop a basis for understanding the industry's evolution and how the industry will eventually adapt to the unregulated economic environment. Morrison and Winston maintain that although the airline industry has not reached long-run ,equilibrium, its evolution is proceeding in a positive direction-one that will preserve and possibly enhance the benefits of deregulation to travellers and carriers. They conclude that the federal government's primary policy objective should be to expand the benefits from unregulated market forces to international travel.

Author Bio

"Clifford Winston is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Among his previous books are Deregulation of Network Industries: What's Next coedited with Sam Peltzman (AEI-Brookings, 2000), and Alternate Route"