‘A Very Costly Industry’: The cost of Britain’s privatised railway

S. McCartney and J. Stittle

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2017, vol. 49, issue C, 1-17

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the financial performance of the British passenger rail industry since privatisation in the mid-1990s. This experiment, which not merely transferred a state-owned and fully integrated industry into the private sector, but dismantled it into over 100 separate entities, has generated considerable and highly critical academic literature. A major contention of this literature is that, contrary to the predictions of its proponents, privatisation has largely failed to improve efficiency and has actually increased costs, or more exactly, costs are higher than they would have been, had privatisation not taken place.

Keywords: Critical public interest; Privatisation; British; Railways; Costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:49:y:2017:i:c:p:1-17

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2017.04.002

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