Elizabeth "Betsy" E. Bailey (1939-2022)

 Betsey Bailey, an economist of many parts, has passed away.

I knew of her both as an academic dean at CMU and as a proponent of airline deregulation, in theory and practice.  The theory had to do with the idea that even markets with big players who had lots of market share might be perfectly competitive (and hence not need lots of regulation) if they were "contestable," i.e. if new entrants could enter the market at low cost if they saw profitable opportunities.  The idea was that the airline market would keep prices low to ward off new entrants, or entry by competitors into profitable routes.  Her stint on the Civil Aviation Board led to much reduced regulation of commercial airlines, after which airlines adopted the 'hub and spoke' patterns we see today. (When they were regulated, airline routes looked more like railroads, e.g. some had northern routes, some southern...)

Here's the Washington Post obituary:

Elizabeth Bailey, pathbreaker for women in economics, dies at 83. She was the first woman to receive a PhD in economics from Princeton and helped deregulate airlines as the first woman on the Civil Aeronautics Board  By Emily Langer

"Dr. Bailey, 83, who died Aug. 19 at her home in Reston, Va., was widely credited with opening opportunities for women in her field.

"In 1972, she became the first woman to receive a PhD in economics from Princeton University. Five years later, President Jimmy Carter appointed her the first female member of the Civil Aeronautics Board, where she helped provide the intellectual framework for the deregulation of the airline industry.

...

"Later, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Dr. Bailey became the first woman to serve as dean of a Top 10 graduate business school."

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See 

Morrison, Steven A., Clifford Winston, Elizabeth E. Bailey, and Alfred E. Kahn. "Enhancing the performance of the deregulated air transportation system." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Microeconomics 1989 (1989): 61-123.

Bailey, Elizabeth E., David R. Graham, and Daniel P. Kaplan. Deregulating the airlines. Vol. 10. MIT press, 1985.

Bailey, Elizabeth E., and William J. Baumol. "Deregulation and the theory of contestable markets." Yale J. on Reg. 1 (1983): 111.