Airline Traffic and Urban Economic Development

This paper provides new evidence on the link between airline traffic and employment in US metropolitan areas. The evidence confirms the common view that good airline service is an important factor in urban economic development. Frequent service to a variety of destinations, reflected in a high level...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Scotland), 2003-07, Vol.40 (8), p.1455-1469
Main Author: Brueckner, Jan K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air transport
Airlines
Airports
Bgi / Prodig
Chicago metropolitan area
Cities
Coefficients
Economic conditions
Economic development
Employment
Enterprises
Human geography
Illinois
Metropolitan areas
Passenger service
Traffic
Traffic estimation
Transportation sector
U.S.A
United States
Urban conditions
Urban development
Urban economics
Urban economics. Equipment. Transportation
Urban geography
Urban studies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper provides new evidence on the link between airline traffic and employment in US metropolitan areas. The evidence confirms the common view that good airline service is an important factor in urban economic development. Frequent service to a variety of destinations, reflected in a high level of passenger enplanements, facilitates easy face-to-face contact with businesses in other cities, attracting new firms to the metro area and stimulating employment at established enterprises. The empirical results show that a 10 per cent increase in passenger enplanements in a metro area leads approximately to a 1 per cent increase in employment in service-related industries. However, airline traffic has no effect on manufacturing and other goods-related employment, suggesting that air travel is less important for such firms than for service-related businesses. These estimates are generated controlling for reverse causality between employment and traffic. The results imply that expansion of Chicago's O'Hare airport would raise service-related employment in the Chicago metro area by 185 000 jobs (this impact assumes that expansion raises traffic by 50 per cent). Thus, the expansion of O'Hare airport represents a powerful economic development tool, as argued by its proponents.
ISSN:0042-0980
1360-063X
DOI:10.1080/0042098032000094388