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Review of Industrial Organization

Erschienen in:

01.08.2013

The ‘Railroad Problem’ and the Interstate Commerce Act

verfasst von: John Howard Brown

Erschienen in: Review of Industrial Organization | Ausgabe 1-2/2013

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Abstract

The emergence of railroads presented a problem for the developing economic profession. Railroads, by their very nature, often had a localized monopoly. The check that competition was expected to impose on firm behavior was singularly lacking. At the same time, railroads in the United States were national in scope and thus affected interstate commerce. The Interstate Commerce Act and the Commission spawned by the Act represented the first halting steps towards coping with the monopoly power that was a consequence of the Second Industrial revolution. In this paper, the views of prominent economic and legal thinkers regarding the proper legal framework for railroads are reviewed.

Vorheriger Artikel Introduction: The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887

Nächster Artikel Voting, Regulation, and the Railroad Industry: An Analysis of Private and Public Interest Voting Patterns

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Smith might equally be recognized as the founder of Industrial Organization as a discipline, since he recognized both the wastes of monopoly and the temptations of collusion. These joint impediments to economic performance represent the foundational problems of the discipline. Both of these issues loomed large in the behavior of railroad.

Some would question the impact of railroads was so extensive as to represent a singularity. In particular, Fogel (1964) assesses the impact of railroads on economic growth as quite modest. Fishlow (1965) attributes greater power to railroad’s in fueling economic development.

Indeed economics struggles to analyze such network industries to this day.

One of the most shocking results of my research for this paper was to discover that there is no full length biography of Thomas M. Cooley, 19th Century legal scholar, Michigan Supreme Court Justice, founding faculty member of the University of Michigan Law School, and first chair of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

During the debates preceding the final passage of the ICA, there were joking references to the institution’s inability to legislate on the matter.

Dionysius Lardner was presumably ignored because his work was nearly 40 years old and British.

Adams, Jr, C. F. (1878). Railroads: Their origins and problems. Reprint by J. &J. Harper Editions, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, 1969, in the series The Allan Nevins Reprints in American Economic History.

Berle, A. A., & Means, G. C. (1933). The modern corporation and private property. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.

Chandler, A. D, Jr. (1977). The visible hand: The managerial revolution in American business. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press.

Clark, J. B. (1904). The problem of monopoly. New York, NY: The Columbia University Press, The Macmillan Company, agents.

Cooley, T. M. (1884). Popular and legal views of traffic pooling vol. 24. Chicago: Railway Review.

Fishlow, A. (1965). American railroads and the transformation of the Ante-bellum economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fogel, R. W. (1964). Railroads and American economic growth: Essays in econometric history. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hadley, A. T. (1885). Railroad transportation: Its history and its laws. New York, Boston: G. Putnam’s Sons.

Lardner, D. (1850). Railway economy: A treatise on the new art of transport. Taylor, Walton & Maberly: London. American edition: Harper & Brothers, New York. Reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley 1968.

Railway Age. (1887). Light on the law. Chicago, IL.

Schartz, B. (Ed.) (1973). The economic regulation of business and industry: A legislative history of U.S. regulatory agencies, vol. 1, interstate commerce commission, Chelsea House Publishers in association with R.R. Bowker Company, New York and London.

Vinge, V. (1993). The coming technological singularity: How to survive in the post-human era. Winter Whole Earth Review.

Titel: The ‘Railroad Problem’ and the Interstate Commerce Act
verfasst von: John Howard Brown
Publikationsdatum: 01.08.2013
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Review of Industrial Organization / Ausgabe 1-2/2013
Print ISSN: 0889-938X
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7160
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-013-9389-5

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Weitere Artikel der Ausgabe 1-2/2013

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A Note from the General Editor About This Special Issue

The Legacy of the Interstate Commerce Act and Labor: Legislation, Unionization, and Labor Earnings in Surface Transportation Services

Understanding ICC Rate Structure Regulation: A Spatial Analysis

Voting, Regulation, and the Railroad Industry: An Analysis of Private and Public Interest Voting Patterns

Introduction: The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887

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