This report examines the form regulation should take in rail freight markets to promote efficiency in railways and the wider economy. It analyses issues of monopoly, scale economies, competition, mergers, ownership and the structure of the rail industry. Experience in North America, Australia,...

The paper asks how the modal shift from road to rail in the freight sector is sup-ported by institutional change. Following North (1990), institutions are understood as the "rules of the game" in the rail freight sector. Based on the literature on institutional change, four different...

This paper addresses a hub-and-spoke network problem for railroad freight, where a central planner is to find transport routes, frequency of service, length of trains to be used, and transportation volume. Hub-and-spoke networks, often found in air freight, have not been favoured by railways in...