T hirty years ago, our paper entitled “The High Cost of Regulating U.S. Railroads” (Regulation, January/ February 1981) appeared in this journal. At the time, the Staggers Act had just been signed into law. Our paper provided an analysis of the U.S. railroad industry’s performance for the generation immediately preceding the legislation. We focused on the cost of pre-Staggers regulation and dre...

We describe competition over space between a competitive shipping industry (truck-barge) and one with market power (the railroad). The latter prices so as to "beat the competition" in equilibrium, or else at the monopoly price, if that is lower. The monopoly price rises more slowly than do the costs of transportation (freight absorption) if the spatial demand at each point is log-concave. With ...

We investigated the relationship between railroad station and areal population density in Japan. A cross-sectional analysis and a series of longitudinal analysis on the station development and changes in population density are conducted. The overall trend of higher density near the station is observed with a relatively high level of variance. Also, it is pointed out that railroad service is nec...

(Open) Standards Wars In “The Art of Standards Wars,” Robert Shapiro gives a brief overview of several major standards wars in business history. The oldest one he mentions is the battle over standard railroad gauge between the Northern and Southern United States. The development of railroads in the United States was done with little coordination, so that by 1860, there were seven different rail...