Assessment of the Impact of Aviation Passenger Flow on the Economic Activity of a Settlement in Russia

The work, based on microdata, analyzes the role of air transport in shaping the business activity of Russian settlements. The focus is primarily on cities in which the dynamics of air passenger traffic is largely shaped by government subsidies. Gross revenue in constant prices of enterprises of all types operating in a locality is considered as an indicator of economic activity. Based on the concept of the Cobb–Douglas production function, several variants of models have been formed to assess this effect. In order to analyze the stability of the obtained estimates, versions of models with only air transport, as well as models with the full range of available modes of transport for a populated area, were considered. As the main result, estimates of the elasticity of the gross revenue of a populated area based on passenger traffic in air transport were obtained.