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The role of small airports in economic development
Journal of Airport Management,
4
(2),
125-136
(2010)
Abstract
As one of the most important transport modes in the USA, air transportation has both influenced economic development and been influenced by it. Knowing the scale of these effects is important both for the development and management of airports, and for policy makers who make strategic decisions regarding airport planning and investment. Prior studies of the economic impacts of air transportation have focused mainly on the ties between large airports and regional economic development. Much less attention has been paid to the impact of small airports on their local areas. Some argue that small airports operating a passenger model not unlike an urban transit service can contribute significantly to regional economic development. However, with the exception of some work on high-income tourist destinations, previous studies provide little clear evidence to support a strong positive correlation between local air transportation and economic development. Furthermore, the direction of causation between air traffic and economic development is not entirely clear: regional economic development driven by other factors can lead to more air traffic; however, it is also possible that by generating traffic, airports act as a catalyst for local investment. This study uses a sample of 66 small airports in Virginia to explore the functional relationship between local air transportation and regional economic development.
Keywords: regional airports; economic development; Virginia's airports
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Kenneth Button has a PhD in economics from Loughborough University and is a university professor at George Mason University. Previously he was professor of applied economics and transport at Loughborough University, Villanova School of Business professor of transport and environment at the Tinbergen Institute, and MBP professor of economics at the National University of Singapore. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of both the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation and the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Researcher Award and the Herbert O. Whitten Service Award, and he has twice been elected president of the Transportation Research Forum. He has been awarded the Distinguished Scholarship Award by the Transportation and Public Utilities Group of the American Economics Association and the initial distinguished fellow of the Air Transport Research Society. He was founding associate editor of Transportation Research A: Policy and Practice and founding editor of Transportation Research D: Transport and Environment, and he served 20 years as editor of the Journal of Air Transport Management. He has given invited evidence to the US Congressional Transportation and Small Businesses Committees and to both the UK House of Lords and UK House of Commons Transport Committees. He has published, or has in press, some 100 academic books/edited volumes and over 400 papers in academic journals and edited works mainly in the fields of transportation and regulatory economics. His latest book is The Value of Applied Economics: The Life and Work of Arthur (A.J.) Brown.
