This study investigates whether airports should be prohibited from charging differential charges to airlines. Two countries’ (publicly owned) airports and airlines interlink, and passengers travel round-trips. Each country may choose pricing regimes (uniform versus discriminatory charges) and charge levels, sequentially or simultaneously, to maximize local welfare. Surprisingly, we find that each country choosing uniform charges achieves unique equilibrium in the sequential game, in which countries may commit to a particular pricing regime before setting charge levels. However, in the simultaneous game without the commitment effect, each country choosing discriminatory charges achieves the unique equilibrium. The total welfare achieved under the former equilibrium is larger than (equal to) that under the latter for asymmetric (symmetric) airline competition. These findings provide the economic rationale for the prevalent non-discriminatory principles for international airports from a local and global welfare perspective.

本研究调查是否应禁止机场向航空公司收取差别费用。两国（公有）机场和航空公司相互连接，旅客往返。每个国家都可以依次或同时选择定价制度（统一收费与歧视性收费）和收费水平，以最大限度地提高当地福利。令人惊讶的是，我们发现每个选择统一收费的国家都在顺序博弈中实现了独特的均衡，在这种博弈中，各国可能会在设定收费水平之前承诺特定的定价制度。然而，在没有承诺效应的同步博弈中，各国选择歧视性收费达到了唯一均衡。对于非对称（对称）航空公司竞争，前者均衡下获得的总福利大于（等于）后者。这些发现从地方和全球福利的角度为国际机场流行的非歧视性原则提供了经济依据。