ABSTRACT
The liberalisation of the US domestic air-freight market in 1977, and the more well-known liberalisation of the US domestic passenger market the following year, attracted considerable academic attention. The move from a highly regulated industry to one characterised by essentially free entry and exit provided economists with a rare chance to study a dramatic transformation in market conditions that would not be excessively muddied by other policy changes.1 Since that time there have been other regulatory reforms that have offered somewhat similar opportunities, but analysis has often been clouded by reforms being staggered over a large number of years, as in the case of the European Union, or only applying to a relatively small market, as with New Zealand and Australia.
