Economic Aspects of Regional Airport Development

This paper describes how transport has important effects on the nature of local economies and on their overall development. The focus of the paper is on the particular role that air transport, and in particular airports, can play in the regional economies. Public policy has always been interested in ensuring that adequate and appropriate air transport infrastructure is available to serve regions, be it for strict economic reasons or for social and political purposes. Where to invest, the form of investments and its scale have long been within the remit of economic analysts, and more recently the matters of finance and air service retention has attracted mounting interest. The role that economics can play in better understanding many of these issues is considered.