| Popis: |
In this paper, we examine two forms of airline-High Speed Rail (HSR) agreements when operators jointly bear some lump investments to provide a bundle of domestic HSR and international air services through a multimodal congested hub. The first one is a vertical agreement (VA) where the HSR operator decides to sell a number of seats on the train to the airline, which, in turn, offers the combined rail-air service in the downstream connecting market. Under the second type of agreement, transport operators form a (supervised) joint venture (JV) that exclusively provides the combined rail-air service, while the airline and the HSR operator share the JV’s profit on the basis of their relative bargaining power. Both types of agreements are beneficial to passenger traffic in the connecting market and in the overall network. However, when the air transport and the HSR service are sufficiently differentiated, or the hub capacity is sufficiently low, a VA between operators might increase congestion at the hub and reduce passenger surplus. Conversely, a JV agreement benefits passenger surplus regardless of the hub congestion and the level of substitutability between modes. However, such an agreement might not ensure incentive-compatibility when operators have significantly different bargaining power. Our findings provide antitrust authorities with some insights to decide whether or not intermodal agreements should pass antitrust scrutiny and/or whether to limit the scope of the cooperation in the presence of multimodal congested hubs. |
