This Time is Different (?): Telecommunications Unbundling and Lessons for Railroad Regulation

Thomas Beard, Jeffrey Thomas Macher () and Chris Vickers
Additional contact information
Jeffrey Thomas Macher: Georgetown University

Review of Industrial Organization, 2016, vol. 49, issue 2, No 7, 289-310

Abstract: Abstract In the railroad industry, there have been proposals for carriers to open their networks to competitors at regulated prices in markets that lack competition. Such rail “unbundling” is intended to reduce rates by facilitating competition when the underlying economics of the network makes facilities entry infeasible. These proposals mirror arguments made in support of telephony network element unbundling under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. We examine the unbundling experience in the telecom industry to draw lessons for similar proposals in the rail industry. We suggest network unbundling in railroads is unlikely to achieve its objectives today for many of the same reasons that it largely failed in telecommunications in the past.

Keywords: Railroads; Telecommunications; Regulation; Unbundling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11151-016-9517-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:revind:v:49:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s11151-016-9517-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... on/journal/11151/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11151-016-9517-0

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Industrial Organization is currently edited by L.J. White

More articles in Review of Industrial Organization from Springer, The Industrial Organization Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().