Beyond the Balance Sheet: Evidence from a Fixed-Effects Panel Analysis of the Big Four U.S. Carriers

Saul Quintana Navarro; Antonio García de la Parra Motta; María Elena Raquel Nieto Saucedo

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Beyond the Balance Sheet: Evidence from a Fixed-Effects Panel Analysis of the Big Four U.S. Carriers

Quintana Navarro, Saul ^[1] ; García de la Parra Motta, Antonio ^[2] ; Raquel Nieto-Saucedo, María Elena ^[1]
1. [1] Universidad Anáhuac
  
  Universidad Anáhuac
  
  México
2. [2] Universidad Iberoamericana
Localización: COMPENDIUM: Cuadernos de Economía y Administración, ISSN-e 1390-9894, ISSN 1390-8391, Vol. 13, Nº. 2, 2026 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Revista Compendium: Cuadernos de Economía y Administración), págs. 189-204
Idioma: español
Títulos paralelos:
- BEYOND THE BALANCE SHEET: EVIDENCE FROM A FIXED-EFFECTS PANEL ANALYSIS OF THE BIG FOUR U.S. CARRIERS
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Resumen
- This study examines the financial and operational determinants of brand value in the U.S. airline industry using a balanced panel of the four major carriers (Delta, American, United, and Southwest) over 2014–2024. Employing Fixed-Effects estimation with cluster-robust standard errors and two approaches to address multicollinearity, eight model specifications yield consistent primary findings. Total assets emerge as the dominant predictor of brand value (elasticity: 0.78–2.72), supporting a scale-brand nexus grounded in the resource-based view. Long-term debt consistently depresses brand value (elasticity: −0.70 to −0.87), establishing a leverage-brand penalty relevant to capital structure decisions. Advertising expenditure enters positively in all ratio-based models, offering directional support for the advertising-brand equity hypothesis, though significance is limited by the small number of clusters. The orthogonalization strategy shows excess capacity as a positive, significant predictor, consistent with premium carriers sustaining brand equity through network breadth. Operating income enters negatively across both strategies, suggesting a within-firm profit-brand trade-off. The COVID-19 pandemic exerted a residual negative brand impact of roughly 30%, though marginally significant. Overall, publicly available financial and operational metrics can meaningfully explain brand value dynamics in regulated industries.