A Survey of Empirical Research on the Productivity and Efficiency Measurement of Airports

Airport benchmarking has become a popular tool used by economists and airport managers alike. Within academic circles, a number of studies emerged assessing the productivity and efficiency of airports. This paper surveys the methods, data, and findings of empirical research in order to learn from previous research, and to gain further understanding of the airport industry. Our survey reveals that while commercialisation and restructuring contributed to efficiency increases, findings on ownership and scale effects are inconsistent. Data availability generally proved to be a serious issue. However, substantial progresses in capturing the increasing heterogeneous character of airports were made over time.