This book focuses on the factors that support the strengths of international airlines in general and the Asian airline carriers in particular. Defining the quality of human capital as the level of education and the competence of airline employees, it analyzes the efficiency of 39 airlines in various regions, both in terms of production and cost structures. It argues that, despite Asia's well-developed and globally competitive manufacturing sector, aided by open market practices, its overall service sector still lags far behind more advanced economies. As this does not stop Asia-based carriers from generally being more efficient than their counterparts in Europe and North America, the book investigates how competitiveness analysis of the airline industry can help Asian policymakers better prepare for the liberalization of the service sector, given how crucial this aspect is for the future growth of the Asia-Pacific region. Efficiency and Competitiveness of International Airlines offers a valuable resource for policymakers, airline employees, and researchers and students of microeconomics.

Provides a framework for developing strategies to improve the competitiveness of airlines in the global marketplace Estimates the different technologies, regulation and market structures that determine airline efficiency Identifies Asian carriers' strengths in terms of production, cost structures and efficiency Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext

Almas Heshmati is Professor of Economics at Jönköping University and Sogang University. He held similar positions at the Korea University, Seoul National University, University of Kurdistan Hawler, RATIO Institute (Sweden), and the MTT Agrifood Research (Finland). He was Research Fellow at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), the United Nations University during 2001-2004. From 1998 to 2001, he was Associate Professor of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. He has a PhD degree from the University of Gothenburg (1994), where he held a Senior Researcher position until 1998. His research interests include applied microeconomics, globalization, development strategy, efficiency, productivity, and growth with application to manufacturing and services. In addition to more than 100 scientific journal articles, he has published books on the EU Lisbon Process, global inequality, East Asian manufacturing, the Chinese economy, technology transfer, information technology, water resources, landmines, power generation, development economics, economic growth, and world values. Shahrouz Abolhosseini has a PhD degree in Technology Management (2014) from Seoul National University. Prior to his doctoral studies, he served as a crude oil marketing expert (2004-2007) and petroleum products marketing expert (2007-2010) at the National Iranian Oil Company. Previously he worked as an oil and gas market analyst (2001) and project financial coordinator (2001-2004) at Petropars Limited Company. He held a number of other research-related positions during the period 1995-2000 at the Institute for International Energy Studies, Economic and Finance Affairs Ministry, and Parliament Research Center. His research interests include energy economics and policy, and renewable and non-renewable energy sources. Jörn Altmann is Professor for Technology Management, Economics, and Policy at the College of Engineering of Seoul NationalUniversity. Prior to this, he taught at the University of California at Berkeley, worked as a Senior Scientist at Hewlett-Packard Labs, and has been a postdoc at EECS and ICSI of UC Berkeley. During that time, he worked on international research projects about pricing of Internet services. Dr. Altmann received his B.Sc., his M.Sc. (1993), and his Ph.D. (1996) from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Dr. Altmann's current research centres on the economics of Internet services and Internet infrastructures that integrate economic models. In particular, he focuses on the analyses of network topologies, networked businesses, and resource allocation schemes. On these topics of research, he has publications in major conferences and journals, serves on editorial bodies of journals (Electronic Markets, Electronic Commerce Research Journal), is involved in many conference program committees, and has been an invited speaker to several conferences. He also served on several European, US American, and other national panels for evaluating research proposals on networks and emerging technologies. Currently, he chairs the International Conference on Economics on Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services, GECON.

Inhalt
1: Introduction to Efficiency and Competitiveness of International Airlines.- 2: Survey of Studies on Airlines and their Efficiencies.- 3. A Review of the Airline Industry.- 4: Stochastic Frontier Production Function Model Specification and Estimation Results.- 5: Stochastic Frontier Cost Function Model Specification and Estimation Results.- 6: Summary, Conclusion and Policy Recommendations.