This paper analyses the potential impact of airport competition on technical efficiency by applying the spatial stochastic frontier approach (SSFA) rather than the traditional model (SFA). The SSFA allows for isolating the cross-sectional spatial dependence and evaluating the role of intangible factors in influencing an airport's economic performance through the inclusion of the distance matrix and the shared destinations matrix calibrated for different distances. By analysing the statistical differences between the traditional and the spatial model, it is possible to identify the competition effects. This study includes 206 airports at the worldwide level. The results show the existence of the spatial component: we detected a different influence of airports’ efficiency levels according to the geographical distances. This could have not been captured by the traditional SFA. We conclude that when incorporating spatial spillover effects into the airport efficiency analysis, the efficiency dynamics are strongly dependent on the spatial distance among airports.

本文通过应用空间随机前沿方法（SSFA）而不是传统模型（SFA）来分析机场竞争对技术效率的潜在影响。SSFA 允许通过包含距离矩阵和针对不同距离校准的共享目的地矩阵来隔离横截面空间依赖性并评估无形因素在影响机场经济绩效方面的作用。通过分析传统模型和空间模型之间的统计差异，可以识别竞争效应。该研究包括全球范围内的 206 个机场。结果表明空间成分的存在：我们检测到机场效率水平根据地理距离的不同影响。这不可能被传统的 SFA 捕获。我们得出结论，当将空间溢出效应纳入机场效率分析时，效率动态强烈依赖于机场之间的空间距离。