The impact of airport competition on technical efficiency: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis applied to Italian airports

We investigate how the intensity of competition among airports affects their technical efficiency by computing airports’ markets on the basis of a potential demand approach. We find that the intensity of competition has a negative impact on airports’ efficiency in Italy during the 2005–2008 period. This implies that airports belonging to a local air transportation system where competition is strong exploit their inputs less intensively than do airports with local monopoly power. Furthermore, we find that public airports are more efficient than private and mixed ones. Since public airports take into account the positive externalities created by air transportation in the local economy, they are more willing to subsidize airlines in developing the airports’ connections. Hence, policy makers should provide incentives to implement airports’ specialization in local systems where competition is strong. Moreover, when regulating airport charges, they should take into account the impact of the above externalities.Airport efficiency; stochastic distance function; airport competition

Price asymmetries in European airfares

This research analyses airlines' pricing decisions in response to changes in the market conditions. We estimate the effects of jet fuel price changes on European airfares at airline/route level by discriminating on the grounds of supplied capacity and markets’ competitive structure. Our results show that airlines tend to adjust fares asymmetrically following a “rocket and feather” behaviour. The asymmetric pricing is marked in periods of decreasing capacity when the increases of fuel price are passed at a higher degree than fuel cost savings. In contrast, when capacity increases the asymmetry is lowered. Moreover, we show that highly competitive markets are characterized by a lower price asymmetry compared to low competition markets. Finally, our results show that airline price asymmetry reaches its maximum when capacity is reduced and competition is low

Profitability change in the global airline industry

This paper studies airline profitability change computed through a Bayesian estimation of a cost function. The stochastic frontier is applied to a dataset including the largest worldwide airlines in the period 1983–2010. We show that productivity change is mainly driven by technical change becoming continuously positive from early 1990s. Furthermore, in the last decade profitability change is mainly driven by input price change which exhibits a similar pattern to output price change. In presence of productivity growth, the output price increase is lower than the input price increase suggesting that part of productivity gains are transferred from airlines to consumer

Laboratory evaluation of several nanofilled dental resin composites: mechanical and chemical properties

2013/2014The present thesis focused on nanofilled dental resins. The first year activity focused on depth of cure analysis of nanofilled composites. The second year activity focused on hardness, depth of cure and shrinkage stress analysis of bulk fill resin composites. The third year focused on degree of conversion and hardness of nanofilled resin cements.XXVII Ciclo198