The changes faced by the global rail industry in recent years have brought a redefinition of some of the traditional regulatory instruments available in this sector. This paper, focusing on price and quality regulation, discusses how these instruments have been applied in several countries where...

This paper discusses how the current trend towards increased private participation in the rail industry is reshaping the way in which Governments should address the main regulatory challenges arising from the particular economic and technical characteristics of this industry. We review the role...

Traditionally, transport regulation has been viewed as an exercise in second-best optimization, acknowledging the existence of huge information problems. Then the rail industry was deeply restructured worldwide to halt erosion of the sector's share of transportation markets. Restructuring took...

There has recently been a great deal of interest in the impacts of the deregulating and restructuring measures in the European railway sector. A vast amount of literature is devoted to analyzing the effects of these deregulation and restructuring measures on efficiency and productivity and the...

The processes of vertical and horizontal separation within the railway sector are relatively recent in many European countries, and as a result, little analytical research has been carried out on their impact. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of these organisational reforms on...

This paper analyses the impact of transport infrastructures on the economic growth of both regions and sectors, distinguishing among modes of transport. It also attempts to capture the spillover effects or network effects associated with transport infrastructures. Two different methodologies are...

This paper develops a theoretical model for freight transport characterized by competition between means of transport (the road and maritime sectors), where modes are perceived as differentiated products. Competitive behavior is assumed in the road freight sector, and there are constant returns...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the evolution of productivity in the European railways in the period 1970–95. We use a non-parametric approach that enables changes in productivity to be broken down into variations in efficiency and technical change. The results indicate that the...