IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/eme/rhetzz/s0743-41542016000034a009.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

No Place For Law and Economics: The Controversy over Railroad Regulation before the Hepburn Act

In: Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology

Author

Listed:
  • Nicola Giocoli

Abstract

At the turn of the 20th-century railroad regulation was hotly debated in the United States. Railways were accused of abusing of their monopolistic position, in particular by discriminating rates. Public opinion’s pressure for tighter regulation led to the 1906 enactment of the Hepburn Act, which strengthened the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission. American economists actively participated in the debate. While most of them sided with the pro-regulation camp, the best economic analysis came from those who used the logic of modern law and economics to demonstrate how most railroads’ practices, including rate discrimination, were simply rational, pro-efficiency behavior. However, as relatively unknown Chicago University economist Hugo R. Meyer would discover, proposing that logic in public events could at that time cost you your academic career.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Giocoli, 2016. "No Place For Law and Economics: The Controversy over Railroad Regulation before the Hepburn Act," Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, in: Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, volume 34, pages 293-338, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:rhetzz:s0743-41542016000034a009
    DOI: 10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A009/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A009/full/epub?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec&title=10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A009
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A009/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Railway economics; rate regulation; Hepburn Act; A. T. Hadley; F. W. Taussig; H. R. Mayer; B13; K23; L51;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B13 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Neoclassical through 1925 (Austrian, Marshallian, Walrasian, Wicksellian)
    • K23 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Regulated Industries and Administrative Law
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:rhetzz:s0743-41542016000034a009. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.