This paper utilises a unique dataset comprising of a hundred years of Australian railway history to develop a cost function for Australia's railways. It explores two different functional forms, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each, and explores some of the ramifications of the...

Productivity growth in Australia's railways through the 20th Century was neither smooth nor uniformly positive. It was static or falling for much of the century, before increasing rapidly with dieselisation and the rise of minerals traffic. This paper uses regression analysis to develop an...

The railways used to transport iron ore in the Pilbara region of Western Australia are subject to State Agreement Acts. Each of these contains some form of access clause, for third-party trains. Most are very similar. All are contained below, for the reference of whomever needs them, copied and...

The regulation of infrastructure by the ACCC and other economic regulators in Australia is based around net present value estimation techniques. Recently, Monkhouse (2007), suggested that real options valuation would provide better incentives for investment in infrastructure, but did not...

The provision of third-party access to rail infrastructure in WA's Pilbara region has been a contentious issue over the past decade. The most recent endeavour proposed by the State Government involves a haulage regime, whereby incumbents would be required to haul the wagons of third parties...

The Electricity Reform Task Force (ERTF) has recently released its blueprint for the future of the electricity industry in Western Australia. In general, the market structure proposed is appropriate, but with some caveats. Perhaps the most important issue affecting the future success of reforms...

For economists and regulators attempting to correctly price third party access to essential infrastructure, informational asymmetries between the regulated and the regulator render accurate quantification of the long run marginal cost of the infrastructure impossible for the regulator and hence...