Civil aircraft procurement and colonial ties: Evidence on the market for jetliners, 1952–89

Abstract

We investigate the extent to which (quasi-)colonial ties played a role in the procurement of jet aircraft by airlines in the Global South. Because we do not have access to archival data on the sensitive issue of aircraft procurement, we take an indirect empirical approach. Our investigation is based on a dataset including all Western jet aircraft delivered between 1952 and 1989. We ask if, to what extent, and how long airlines from former British, French, Dutch, and US (quasi-)colonies tended to buy jets from their former or, respectively, most recent colonial master. We compare the (ex-ante) expected geographical distribution of politically unbiased jet deliveries to the (ex-post) actual historical and potentially biased distribution. We find that colonial ties to former colonial masters from Europe especially mattered until the early/mid-1970s when, triggered by the two oil price crises, pure economic motives gained more significance in informing procurement decisions.