One important issue facing reformers considering the restructuring of the seaports and freight railways sectors of a developing country is the creation of competition - or, alternatively, avoiding the creation or preservation of monopoly power. In seaports a crucial distinction is often that...

Can industrial policy be effective when dealing with a revolutionary new technology? Mark Casson's recent book, "The World's First Railway System," offers the intriguing claim that a slight dose of central planning by the British government in the 1840s would have produced a dramatically more...

Naturally monopolistic network industries are subject to regulation of access to market and charging in order to achieve optimal use of infrastructure and avoid the abuse of monopoly power. Relatively little is known what results does such regulation generate and whether it achieves objectives....

The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 relaxed restrictions on pricing and eased abandonment procedures in the railroad industry. Although the Act made virtually no reference to labor, its impact on labor has been dramatic. The long-term contraction of industry employment accelerated quite sharply after...

The Russian economy relies on the Russian freight railways to an extraordinary degree. In 2001, after years of debate, the Russian government adopted an ambitious plan to transform this vertically integrated, government owned monopoly into a system that would rely more on private investment and...

The renationalisation of rail infrastructure has not been a success. Network Rail has been plagued by crisis after crisis, with major projects hit by delays, mismanagement and large cost overruns. Its problems echo those suffered by the inefficient nationalised industries of the post-war period....

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to compare the competition and productivity of the US freight rail transportation industry for the past 41 years (1980 ∼ 2020), which consists of the two periods, before and after the abolishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in 1995....