Kenneth John Button

George Mason University | GMU · Schar School of Policy and Government

This article is concerned with the likely future direction of social science, and especially economic, research in air transportation. To avoid excessive speculation, the assessment is based on as much factual information as possible. It assumes, for example, that much of the technology likely to be used in the near future is known today, although...

Several recent papers have focused on Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow’s 1960 article applying the Phillips curve to the US. These interactions have been partly technical in nature, but have also involved discussion of the use of the curve in US policy making and its interpretation. The attention here is on the contribution of Samuelson and Solow’s...

This paper looks at the challenges in the economic regulation of stand-up electronic scooters, or “e-scooters”. The e-scooter represents one of several innovative modes that have emerged to cater for transportation needs in urban areas. They provide connectivity linking local origins and destinations, as well as interconnectivity linking urban loca...

This article looks at how a group of diverse economic experts tackled a major macroeconomic question and managed to reach a consensus conclusion. This was despite being confronted with limited data, embryonic general-equilibrium methodologies, and limited computing power. The realization, in the early 1960s, that the procession of nuclear weapons w...

This paper offers an overview of what we know about the impacts of the economic regulation of commercial airports. It offers no new empirical findings, but rather considers the challenges of conducting ex post analysis of regulatory reform. It provides an overview of what completed studies have found and assesses whether regulations have achieved t...

A century ago Arthur Pigou published The Economics of Welfare. Within this volume are a few lines relating to the pricing of traffic congestion. Over the years, these lines have attracted the attention and thoughts of some of the leading economists of their day. These have included Knight, Clapham, and Robertson in the 1920s; Kahn and Viner in the...

This article examines the economics of Africa's emerging air cargo supply chains, taking floriculture as a case study. Floriculture is an important employer, and earner of foreign exchange for several regions of central/southern and eastern Africa including more recently Ethiopia. Air transportation often plays a critical role when the supply-chain...

This chapter looks at the extent to which “regional science” is distinctive enough to be called a unique sub-discipline. It considers the background against which the idea of a regional science was initiated and at the publications, institutions, and work that has been associated with the idea. In particular, it reviews the ways the American Econom...

This chapter focuses on the ideas of Kenneth Boulding and of the Brundtland Commission regarding sustainable development and the extent to which they have permeated air transportation policies. While aviation has seen a considerable reduction in the environmental footprints of individual travelers since the late 1970s as competitive markets have fo...

This paper looks at the economics of ridesourcing (or app-based ride-hailing) with a particular focus on the US. It brings together the rather dispersed literature on the subject focusing on the economic characteristics of the underlying industry and sets this within the broader context of transportation economics. In particular, it sorts out the r...

To facilitate an organized withdrawal from its African territories in the 1960s, the UK authorities undertook studies of the economic potential of each. What has been little studied is the nature and impacts of these exercises on subsequent policy. This paper looks at two such studies that examined ways existing ‘common markets’ in East and Central...

We examine the effects of institutional reforms on both the demand and supply of air transportation in Sub-Saharan Africa. We specifically consider changes in air transportation regulations and the development of general Common Markets for trade in goods and services on African aviation. This is at a time when aviation is becoming more important in...

This paper examines some of the important trends in economics that influenced the liberalization of aviation markets from the late 1970s, the role that economics has played in the subsequent assessment of the implications of these reforms and more recent policy “tweaking”, and at the possible importance of more recent trends in economic thinking in...

This paper adopts a methodology initially developed for seaport choice and applies it to catchment areas for airports in part of the Adriatic region. Unlike much of the analysis of small airports in the region, which focuses on destination airports in the region, the work considers the demands for airports by residents.The analysis differs from mos...

This note considers the implications of the presence of low-cost airlines, and particularly their number, on the economic efficiency of tourist oriented, regional airports. Using a combined programming and econometric framework we examine the economic efficiency of twelve airports in North-east Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia over eight years and how...

The difficulties economists have in conducting laboratory experiments necessitates much of their applied analysis being based on numerous quasi-experiments conducted under a variety of uncontrolled conditions. The result is the need to synthesis these results if any generally useful parameters are to be found for such things as value transfers or p...

This paper examines the role of the English economist Arthur (A. J.) Brown in the 1950s debate surrounding the wage-rate change/unemployment relationship. While the publication of William (Bill) Phillips’s 1958 paper and the subsequent moniker of the “Phillips Curve” attracted a wealth of attention, Brown’s book on the subject, The Great Inflation...

This paper is concerned with examining the role of the English economist Arthur (A.J.) Brown in the 1950s debate surrounding the wage-change unemployment relationship. While the publication of William (Bill) Phillips’ 1958 paper, and the subsequent moniker of the “Phillips Curve” attracted a wealth of attention, Brown’s book on the subject, The Gre...

Africa is the smallest of the 'regional' aviation markets but one that Boeing and others expect to expand over the medium term. Developments on the continent that require the creation of robust and efficient air transport include growth in tourism, the export of 'exotics', and the emergence of modern manufacturing and high-tech industries. Africa's...

This article extends discussions of potential biases that can exist in applying cost–benefit analysis. While there is extensive evidence that capture can result in stakeholder manipulation of inputs, there are also claims that the analysis is inherently theoretically bias in favour of over acceptance. The article shows that, contrary to these latte...

The article examines the possible implications of climate change for seaport competition and for the local hinterlands of ports of countries that border the Adriatic. The focus is on the effects that further increases in the annual durations over which the Northern Sea Route is navigable will have on costs of shipping between Asian and Europe and,...

The first part of the paper considers the two-sided nature of airport platforms, and argues that on the land-side, analysis and policy has generally over-stated the items that should be included. In this context, the paper’s focus is on airport access and how it should be embraced, along with airside considerations, in a two-sided framework when es...

The way in which US agricultural cargo preference that regulates the international transportation of US Government-generated goods may affect food aid provision is of concern. This article considers specifically the efficiency of the current arrangements whereby 50 per cent of food aid has to be moved by US registered ships, and the potential impli...

This article examines the different demands for direct and indirect flights within sub-Saharan Africa. It develops both a simple reduced form model and a more refined two equation simultaneously system to examine bookings and fares on the major air transportation corridors. Using panel data, this allows estimation of the different fare elasticities...

This article examines the impacts of the ‘Arab Spring’ on trade in air services between the various North African and Levant countries involved. Studies of the implications of these socioeconomic changes on trade in the region are made difficult because of a paucity of good economic data and the involvement of outside countries in the trade that no...

The paper sets in context some of the more recent work that has been conducted on public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the provision and operation of infrastructure. PPPs essentially involve a government or its agent signing an agreement with a private company or consortium to supply it with services with the private sector actor involved in major...

This paper provides a broader understanding of seaport choice. There has been considerable expansion in international maritime container based trade that is requiring substantial investment in seaport capacity. The growth in demand for port services has, however, neither been even over time nor across ports making the defining of appropriate invest...

This paper focuses on the geographical distribution of air transportation growth in sub-Saharan Africa, paying attention to the overhanging legacy effects of European colonisation. The role of the colonial pasts on air movements between 1998 and 2011 is examined to see if patterns of supply have changed and if there has been movement away from link...

We examine the various forces influencing the development and uptake of environmentally beneficial technical changes, focusing on airline technology. Within this context, we consider not only the nature of competition within the final market in which aircraft, an intermediate product, are sold, but also that of the product market itself, the commer...

This article looks at the relative economic efficiency of seaports in the North Adriatic, and the effects of expansions of the European Union (EU) on this. Taking the main container ports in the region between 2004 and 2012, variations in efficiency are found over time dependent on whether constant or variable returns to scale are assumed. The cons...

This article is concerned with the foresights that Alfred Kahn had when he led the deregulation of the US passenger airline industry, and in particular with the role the ideas in his Economics of Regulation played in his actions. Kahn was a reluctant deregulator of the US interstate airline industry. The 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, which he “fat...

We are concerned with the way in which US agricultural cargo preference that regulates the international transportation of US Government generated goods may affect food aid provision. It considers specifically the efficiency of the current arrangements whereby 50 percent of food aid has to be moved by US registered ships, and the potential implicat...

Despite efforts to enhance the efficiency of the African air transportation sector through such actions the Yamoussoukro Decision, African represents less than 2% of the world’s air passenger kilometers. This is despite the fact that air transportation can act as a means of transporting traded goods directly (including the individuals that are the...

This article examines the economic impacts on the United States east coast regions of the EU–US Open Skies Agreement that liberalized air service over the North Atlantic. It considers the link between air travel volumes before and after the Agreement and the economies of the main metropolitan areas. It finds, using a number of model specifications,...

This paper is concerned with forecasting traffic accidents at a relatively aggregate level and over a long time period; the sort of information that is required as part of a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of a major transportation investment or policy change. It is not so focused on appraising the social value of specific safety measures, alth...

This article looks at factors which have affected the shares of public and private money that have been going into public–private transportation partnership investments in the US. It looks at a number of recent partnerships and relates the importance of the private sector to sets of institutional and technical variables.

The paper examines the alternative institutional structures under which air navigation services are provided and evaluates the effects of those changes from an economic efficiency perspective. In makes use of panel data from Europe to consider the effects of differing regulatory and financing systems on the provision of these services by deploying...

This article examines the argument that the introduction of more private sector expertise into public sector transportation demand forecasting will improve its accuracy. An examination of a number of pure public and public–private US highway investment traffic demand forecasts, however, finds no significance evidence that latter are more accurate.

This paper is concerned with variations in the efficiency of European air navigation service providers. Much analysis has been conducted on the efficiency of airlines, but less has been done on air traffic control, or strictly air navigation services. The diversity of air navigation service providers in Europe allows comparison of thirty-six Europe...

The paper examines the potential economic efficiency of on-going changes in the European air traffic control system. Air navigation services in Europe are undergoing a process of consolidation and technological changes known as the Single European Sky initiative. The ultimate aim is to shift the industry from a paradigm based on national borders, t...

The fragmentation of the European air navigation system has been identified as a cause of inefficiencies and additional costs. One of the problems is that since the different national systems are not independent of their neighbours, there might be issues of spatial autocorrelation, where the efficiency of a system is dependent on the efficiency of...

This paper considers the role that economics can play in integrating the environment, urban planning and transportation. The main challenge in moving towards sustainable development is in developing the holistic framework that integrates the environment, economy, and social stability highlighted in the Brundtland Report of 1987. There is a frequent...

The paper examines the potential role that airfreight transport in the US can play in stimulating local and regional economic development. The analysis examines trends in employment and income for metropolitan statistical areas that make use of airfreight services. The focus is on causality, and not on simple correlation, and uses econometric analy...

The focus of this paper looks the role that institutional economics can play in helping our understanding of how environmental problems arise in the air transport sector, and how policy responses are derived. It is positive in the sense that it seeks to help our understanding of things, rather than being in anyway prescriptive about what should be...

This chapter focuses on the ways in which travel behavior and demand are analyzed within the framework of regional science. Unlike numerous recent surveys that cover the more technical and abstract aspects of mathematically modeling travel behavior and demand, the attention here is more on the practical aspect of applying travel behavior and demand...

This paper looks at the efficiency of airports and the ways in which the shifting regulatory structure of airports is gradually impacting on this efficiency. It considers the context in which airports, the nodes in the air transportation system, function in terms of both market and institutional forces, and argues that considerations of efficiency...

The article examines the sustainability of the low-cost, or no-frills, airline business model. It looks at the background to the development of this managerial approach within the context of some prevailing business theories and considers variations on the basic low-cost airline model. It assesses, drawing from the experiences of a number of market...

The paper provides selective comments on the usefulness of economic multipliers in assessing the impacts of regional policies with particular focus on transportation infrastructure investments. Regional multipliers are extremely simple and very convenient tools for estimating the overall impacts of a regional policy on such things as local income a...

The European Union has established itself as a leading text that provides readers from all disciplines with a sound understanding of the economics and policies of the EU. Its wealth of information, detail and analysis has ensured that previous editions have been read by a generation of students, researchers and policy makers. It covers all major EU...

The award of the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics to Oliver Williamson for "his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm" highlights the importance now attached to the new institutional economics. The amount of work on transportation organizations explicitly using the tools of new institutional economics is, however, spar...

The institutional background against which air transport is supplied has been changing rapidly. The initiation of market forces has led to lower fares, additional services, and more efficient airline companies as competitive pressures have grown. A major concern, however, is whether the resultant airline market is sustainable in the long-term. Ther...