Aviation Infrastructure Performance: A Study in Comparative Political Economy

Aviation performance is an important cog in modern globalized economies, which demand flexibility, mobility, efficiency, and dependability. Airport delays have gone from being a nuisance to being a salient public concern, drawing the ire of even the White House. In this important book, international transportation experts compare and contrast how different nations have managed their airports and air traffic control systems and how well they are meeting the needs of their people.

The book's cross-national approach encompasses several different institutional arrangements, making it a timely and valuable study in comparative political economy.

Among the countries studied, the United States is sometimes seen as a bastion of free markets, at the forefront of airline deregulation, but its airports and air traffic control system are publicly owned and operated. The same is true in continental Europe, for the most part. In contrast, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada are experimenting with privatization, while even mainland China is allowing the private sector to participate in airport ownership. Which methods work best, and under what circumstances? This book provides the answers.

Congestion at airports and airline travel delays have become a major concern for the traveling public and attracted the attention of policymakers in a number of countries, including America's president and Congress. This study assesses how airports and air traffic control in regions around the world are addressing the problem and concludes that the United States, in particular, could learn a great deal from other countries' experiments to reduce government ownership and regulation of their aviation infrastructure.

Contributors: Robert Andriulaitis (InterVISTAS Consulting Inc., Vancouver), Kenneth Button (George Mason University), Peter Forsyth (Monash University), David Gillen (University of British Columbia), Anne Graham (University of Westminster), Steven A. Morrison (Northeastern University), Hans-Martin Niemeier (Bremen University of Applied Sciences), Michael W. Tretheway (InterVISTAS Consulting Inc. and University of British Columbia), Andrew Yuen (University of British Columbia), Anming Zhang (University of British Columbia)

Clifford Winston is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, most recently Government Failure vs. Market Failure (AEI-Brookings, 2006). Ginés de Rus is a professor of applied economics at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He is the coauthor, with Antonio Estache, of Privatization and Regulation of Transport Infrastructure (World Bank, 2000).