IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ioe/doctra/391.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

End of the line: Railroads in Chile

Author

Listed:
  • Raimundo Soto

    (Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.)

Abstract

Between 1860 and 1950, railroads in Chile were synonym of modernization, integration, and economic development. By the 1970s railroads were bankrupt and socially discredited, surviving out of government subsidies. By 2000, passenger services had disappeared but private sector freight operations were revitalized after swift reforms. We review the Chilean reforms and experience, focusing on regulation, public sector involvement and political interference, market entry, vertical integration, and externalities. Perhaps uniquely, two different forms of private sector participation in freight operations emerge after reforms: a vertically integrated, privatized railroad and a state-owned, open-access, concession system.

Suggested Citation

  • Raimundo Soto, 2010. "End of the line: Railroads in Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 391, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    • Handle: RePEc:ioe:doctra:391
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economia.uc.cl/docs/doctra/dt-391.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy Atack & Fred Bateman & Michael Haines & Robert A. Margo, 2009. "Did Railroads Induce or Follow Economic Growth? Urbanization and Population Growth in the American Midwest, 1850-60," NBER Working Papers 14640, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Mette Asmild & Torben Holvad & Jens Hougaard & Dorte Kronborg, 2009. "Railway reforms: do they influence operating efficiency?," Transportation, Springer, vol. 36(5), pages 617-638, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vincent Bignon & Rui Esteves & Alfonso Herranz-Loncán, 2015. "Big push or big grab? Railways, government activism, and export growth in Latin America, 1865–1913," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(4), pages 1277-1305, November.
    2. Laurino, Antonio & Ramella, Francesco & Beria, Paolo, 2015. "The economic regulation of railway networks: A worldwide survey," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 202-212.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. María Priscila Ramos & Estefanía Custodio & Sofía Jiménez & Alfredo J. Mainar-Causapé & Pierre Boulanger & Emanuele Ferrari, 2022. "Do agri-food market incentives improve food security and nutrition indicators? a microsimulation evaluation for Kenya," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 14(1), pages 209-227, February.
    2. Dave Donaldson & Richard Hornbeck, 2016. "Railroads and American Economic Growth: A "Market Access" Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(2), pages 799-858.
    3. Fusco, Elisa, 2023. "Potential improvements approach in composite indicators construction: The Multi-directional Benefit of the Doubt model," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    4. Nash, Chris A. & Smith, Andrew S.J. & van de Velde, Didier & Mizutani, Fumitoshi & Uranishi, Shuji, 2014. "Structural reforms in the railways: Incentive misalignment and cost implications," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 16-23.
    5. Olof Ejermo & Katrin Hussinger & Basheer Kalash & Torben Schubert, 2022. "Innovation in Malmö after the Öresund Bridge," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 5-20, January.
    6. Monica Beuran & Marie Gachassin & Gaël Raballand, 2015. "Are There Myths on Road Impact and Transport in Sub-Saharan Africa?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 33(5), pages 673-700, September.
    7. Banerjee, Abhijit & Duflo, Esther & Qian, Nancy, 2020. "On the road: Access to transportation infrastructure and economic growth in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    8. Bai, Xue-jie & Zeng, Jin & Chiu, Yung-Ho, 2019. "Pre-evaluating efficiency gains from potential mergers and acquisitions based on the resampling DEA approach: Evidence from China's railway sector," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 46-56.
    9. Chen, Fanglin & Hao, Xinyue & Chen, Zhongfei, 2021. "Can high-speed rail improve health and alleviate health inequality? Evidence from China," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 266-279.
    10. Chaudhary, Latika & Fenske, James, 2020. "Did railways affect literacy? Evidence from India," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1320, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    11. Lefebvre, M. & Perelman, S. & Pestieau, P., 2015. "Productivity and performance in the public sector," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2015052, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    12. John Tang, 2013. "Railroad expansion and entrepreneurship: evidence from Meiji Japan," CEH Discussion Papers 011, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    13. Berger, Thor & Enflo, Kerstin, 2017. "Locomotives of local growth: The short- and long-term impact of railroads in Sweden," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 124-138.
    14. Atack, Jeremy & Margo, Robert, 2011. "The Impact of Access to Rail Transportation on Agricultural Improvement: The American Midwest as a Test Case, 1850-1860," The Journal of Transport and Land Use, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, vol. 4(2), pages 5-18.
    15. Pavlyuk, Dmitry, 2008. "An Efficiency Analysis of European Countries' Railways," MPRA Paper 20922, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Shahin Shakibaei & Pelin Alpkokin, 2019. "Conflict Resolution in Competitive Liberalized Railway Market: Application of Game Theoretic Concepts," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(01), pages 1-21, November.
    17. Cantos, Pedro & Manuel Pastor, José & Serrano, Lorenzo, 2012. "Evaluating European railway deregulation using different approaches," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 67-72.
    18. Timothy J. Riddiough & Howard E. Thompson, 2012. "Deja vu All Over Again: Agency, Uncertainty, Leverage and the Panic of 1857," Working Papers 102012, Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research.
    19. Mobarak, Ahmed & Lipscomb, Molly & Barham, Tania, 2011. "Development Effects of Electrification: Evidence from the Geologic Placement of Hydropower Plants in Brazil," CEPR Discussion Papers 8427, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Huang, Wencheng & Zhang, Yue & Shuai, Bin & Xu, Minhao & Xiao, Wei & Zhang, Rui & Xu, Yifei, 2019. "China railway industry reform evolution approach: Based on the Vertical Separation Model," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 546-556.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Railways; divestiture; regulation; industrial organization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • L43 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Legal Monopolies and Regulation or Deregulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ioe:doctra:391. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Jaime Casassus (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iepuccl.html .

    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.