We present and examine a novel data set that contains production line information inside US steel plants. We exploit this highly disaggregated data to perform the first study of entry and exit behavior at the level of the production line within individual plants. Our empirical analysis reveals a...

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...

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...