A spatial equilibrium of a stylized railroad network is offered to illustrate that monopoly pricing requires prices on some links that are so high that traffic “does not move.” ICC price structure regulation, which was based on the idea that traffic should be priced to “move” in a...

Since partial deregulation in 1980, there has been a massive consolidation of firms in the U.S. railroad industry premised largely on efficiency gains. We estimate a cost function and use it to calculate cost effects for specific mergers and for all mergers at the industry level from...

We examine the role of public and private interests in the passage of major legislative bills that have governed the rail industry since 1887. Our model of voting patterns in the House and Senate introduces novel measures of industry concentration, competition, and network characteristics. We...