Yu-Chun Chang

An Ongoing Process—A Review of the Open Skies Agreements between the European Union and the United States

Abstract This article seeks to clarify the implications of the Open Skies agreement reached between the European Union (EU) and the USA in March 2007. It begins by reviewing the background of aviation regulation and the negotiations that have taken place between the European Commission (EC) and the USA over the past few years. It discusses the EU and US perspectives on the development of the transatlantic market and summarizes the key elements of the new Open Skies agreement. It goes on to analyse the probable effects of the agreement and identifies the likely winners and losers. It also highlights the unresolved problems for the EU and the USA. Finally, it concludes that while both sides might not be satisfied with the new agreement, it will nonetheless become a liberalized model for other regions of the world to emulate.

Measuring Physical Productivity Growth and Biased Technological Change in Chinese Airports

This paper measures the physical productivity changes for 41 Chinese airports over the 2000-2008 period. The productivity changes link the consideration of environmental factors in decomposed components to a set of indices using the Malmquist productivity approach. The findings suggest that some Chinese airports experienced productivity regress, and should improve their efficiency both in terms of management and scale. By identifying the individual airports that experienced a bias in the production of the relative output of passengers and cargo, this research found that some airports are suitable for developing passenger services, while others might be more suitable for cargo. The empirical results also show that 22 airports experienced runway-using and terminal-saving input bias, 15 airports experienced runway-saving/ terminal-using input bias, and 4 airports experienced neutral technological change.