Replication Data for: Taking Flight: Overcoming Challenges in Airport Development

Abstract: How is it possible to overcome the challenges of providing public goods that create significant negative local externalities? Sometimes called ‘public bads,’ these goods are characterized by the combination of dispersed benefits and concentrated costs, which often lead to high levels of civil society resistance. Deciding where to locate them and how to expand them can therefore be a difficult political issue. I investigate this theoretical problem through the specific case of airport development. Airports provide crucial transit connections and economic opportunities for cities while also creating additional noise pollution and traffic for nearby residents. They are notoriously difficult to build or expand, often plagued with indecision, delays, and cost overruns. Throughout three papers, my dissertation asks: what makes airport development difficult, and how can these impediments be overcome? Potential explanations I explore include variation in technical characteristics, institutions, levels of civil society resistance, and the political issue space. This dataset contains the replication data for the dissertation's second paper, “The (Non)-Impact of Institutions on Airport Development." This paper examines one possible explanation for difficulty in airport expansion: that institutional variation in airport administration and ownership affects the ease with which development can occur. It focuses on two theoretically-motivated institutional variables: an airport’s level of privatization and its level of government regulation. Using an original dataset of expansion outcomes at the busiest airports in the world in 2012, the paper employs multilevel modeling along with logistic and linear regression techniques to test for a relationship between the aforementioned institutional factors and airports’ runway capacity expansion. In contrast with theoretical expectations, the paper finds no discernible connection between these characteristics. The paper’s conclusions also highlight the need for more nuanced case study analysis of airport development projects. The dataset also contains the replication data for the media graphs in the dissertation's third paper, "London's Airport Capacity Problem." This paper looks at two cases of airport expansion in London between 2008 and 2018, one where party and legislative approval occurred and one where it did not, showing that the reorganization of the issue space caused by the surprise Brexit vote offered a new strategic opportunity to over- come entrenched gridlock by reframing the issue of expansion.