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Over the last 20 years, demand for air passenger transport has grown dramatically. At the same time, the two largest domestic airlines merged and several smaller entrants exited without being able to make significant inroads. As a result, the industry is highly concentrated, with a dominant firm and a few fringe firms. This condition has generated considerable public debate about the degree of competition in the airline industry in Chile. With the purpose of contributing to the public discussion, this paper analyzes the industry from an industrial organization point of view. Specifically, the paper describes the domestic airline industry in Chile, defines the relevant market and then analyzes both the degree of concentration and entry conditions. In particular, I focus on the roles played by vertical integration, the computer reservation systems and the revenue management practice. I then evaluate self-regulation of airfares by the dominant firm and propose several public policies to increase competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the structure of tariffs in civil aviation in Chile and the potential cross-subsidies that it generates. We estimate the cross-subsidies that currently exist in this transport networks and find that the current tariff structure generates a number of cross subsidies between airports. In particular, the airports of La Serena, Punta Arenas and Easter Island receive a cross subsidy from the rest of the network. We suggest that it may be beneficial to impose that airports in Chile must fund all their incremental costs. The intuition for this result, which follows from an old idea presented by Adam Smith, Coase and Vickrey, among others, is that the self-financing of airports, or at least their incremental costs, can be an effective mechanism to prevent over investment in infrastructure. In the light of this discussion and the results found in this study it would be advisable to review the structure of Aeronautical Tariffs in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]