Impact of airport policies on regional development. Evidence from the Colombian case

Abstract

AbstractFollowing the global and regional trend, Colombia liberalized the air transport industry in the early 1990s. With this, an uninterrupted (ongoing to date) development of a set of public policies for this sector started, accompanied by various reforms at the institutional level. These transformations took place following the notion that the Colombian State considers air transport as an essential public service that contributes to the national economic and regional development. Within this package of public air transport policies, airport policies have an essential role, through which a large number of airports in the country were privatized (19 to date), which are distributed, almost homogeneously, throughout the Colombian geography. These privately governed airports are located in large, medium, and small cities, and in regions considered remote and isolated. Therefore, this article analyzes the impact of public air transport policies, with a special emphasis on airport policies, on the country’s territorial connectivity and the socioeconomic development of its regions. To analyze the socioeconomic indicators, the methodology of difference‐in‐differences was used, which is a quasi‐experimental econometric and impact evaluation method.