IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/atlecj/v44y2016i3d10.1007_s11293-016-9510-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cost Efficiency of Urban Transport in an Era of Widespread Corruption: the Case of New York Street Railways

Author

Listed:
  • Donald F. Vitaliano

    (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Abstract

Bribery to secure street railway franchises was notorious in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, and New York was the epicenter of this type of fraud. This paper analyzes the cost efficiency of 64 franchises operated in 31 cities across New York state in 1890. The modeling platform is a stochastic frontier estimation of a variable cost function. Contrary to expectations, these private firms are deemed to have minimized costs, and possibly also optimally adjusted their capital stock. Although significant density economies are estimated, no scale or network economies are revealed, which is consistent with the multiplicity of firms operating even in cities of modest size. The efficiency of these firms contrasts sharply with the poor cost efficiency estimated for modern municipal bus operations.

Suggested Citation

  • Donald F. Vitaliano, 2016. "Cost Efficiency of Urban Transport in an Era of Widespread Corruption: the Case of New York Street Railways," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 44(3), pages 293-302, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:atlecj:v:44:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11293-016-9510-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11293-016-9510-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11293-016-9510-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11293-016-9510-x?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fried, Harold O. & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Shelton S. (ed.), 2008. "The Measurement of Productive Efficiency and Productivity Growth," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195183528, Decembrie.
    2. Edward L. Glaeser, 2001. "Public Ownership in the American City," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1930, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    3. Mark Schankerman & M. Ishaq Nadiri, 1984. "Restriced Cost Functions and the Rate of Return to Quasi-Fixed Factors, with an Application to R&D and Capital in the Bell System," NBER Working Papers 1259, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Edward L. Glaeser, 2001. "Public Ownership in the American City," NBER Working Papers 8613, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Voszka, Éva, 2015. "Államosítás, privatizáció és gazdaságpolitika - a főirány széttöredezése [Nationalization and privatization - in the shadow of changing paradigms of economic policy]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 717-748.
    2. Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer, 2003. "The Rise of the Regulatory State," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 401-425, June.
    3. Jeffrey P. Cohen & Cletus C. Coughlin & Sarosh R. Khan, 2002. "Aviation security and terrorism: a review of the economic issues," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 84(Sep), pages 9-24.
    4. Glaeser, Edward & Scheinkman, Jose & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "The injustice of inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 199-222, January.
    5. Petr Pospíšil & Marian Lebiedzik, 2017. "Some of the Theoretical Basis of Local Self-Government in the Czech Republic," DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, European Association Comenius - EACO, issue 1, pages 31-43, March.
    6. Oliver Lewis & Avner Offer, 2022. "Railways as patient capital," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 38(2), pages 260-277.
    7. Rebecca Menes, 2006. "Limiting the Reach of the Grabbing Hand. Graft and Growth in American Cities, 1880 to 1930," NBER Chapters, in: Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America's Economic History, pages 63-93, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Germa Bel & Anton Costas, 2004. "Do public sector reforms get rusty? An empirical analysis on privatization of solid waste collection," Public Economics 0409014, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Hess, David J. & Jordan, Megan L., 2023. "Demunicipalization as political process: Strategic action and the sale of municipal electric utilities in the United States," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    10. Ortega de Miguel, Enrique & Sanz Mulas, Andres, 2007. "A public sector multinational company: The case of Canal de Isabel II," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 143-150, June.
    11. Trigo Gamarra, Lucinda, 2008. "The effects of liberalization and deregulation on the performance of financial institutions: The case of the German life insurance market," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 93, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics.
    12. Jaraitė, Jūratė & Di Maria, Corrado, 2012. "Efficiency, productivity and environmental policy: A case study of power generation in the EU," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 1557-1568.
    13. Duen-Yian Yeh & Ching-Hsue Cheng, 2016. "Performance Management of Taiwan’s National Hospitals," International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(01), pages 187-213, January.
    14. Valentin Zelenyuk, 2023. "Productivity analysis: roots, foundations, trends and perspectives," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 229-247, December.
    15. Tommaso Agasisti & Giuseppe Munda & Ralph Hippe, 2019. "Measuring the efficiency of European education systems by combining Data Envelopment Analysis and Multiple-Criteria Evaluation," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 105-124, June.
    16. Barros, Carlos Pestana & Williams, Jonathan, 2013. "The random parameters stochastic frontier cost function and the effectiveness of public policy: Evidence from bank restructuring in Mexico," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 98-108.
    17. Rita Bastião & Nuno de Sousa Pereira, 2020. "Performance in the Delivery of Primary Health Care Services: A Longitudinal Analysis," CEF.UP Working Papers 2002, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    18. Jose Manuel Cordero & Cristina Polo & Javier Salinas-Jiménez, 2021. "Subjective Well-Being and Heterogeneous Contexts: A Cross-National Study Using Semi-Nonparametric Frontier Methods," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 867-886, February.
    19. Aleksandar Kemiveš & Lidija Barjaktarović & Milan Ranđelović & Milan Čabarkapa & Dragan Ranđelović, 2024. "Assessing the Efficiency of Foreign Investment in a Certification Procedure Using an Ensemble Machine Learning Model," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-26, March.
    20. Goddard, John & Molyneux, Philip & Williams, Jonathan, 2014. "Dealing with cross-firm heterogeneity in bank efficiency estimates: Some evidence from Latin America," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 130-142.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:kap:atlecj:v:44:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11293-016-9510-x. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.