The Regulatory Determinants of Railroad Safety

Jerry Ellig () and Patrick McLaughlin ()
Additional contact information
Jerry Ellig: Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Review of Industrial Organization, 2016, vol. 49, issue 2, No 10, 398 pages

Abstract: Abstract The dramatic improvement in railroad safety since the 1970s has been accompanied by a substantial increase in safety regulation and a substantial reduction in economic regulation after 1980. We assess the effects of both regulatory changes on railroad safety with the use of RegData: a new data set that was developed by one of the authors that measures the amount of regulation that is imposed by specific regulatory agencies on specific industries. We find that partial economic deregulation is associated with improved safety. Safety regulation was most closely associated with improved railroad safety during the period when economic regulation curtailed railroads’ incentives to operate safely.

Keywords: Railroad; Railroad safety; Regulation; Safety regulation; Staggers Act; RegData (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 K23 L51 L92 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11151-016-9525-0 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_s11151-016-9525-0

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11151-016-9525-0

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 ().