IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/wpaper/27889.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Were British railway companies well-managed in the early twentieth century?

Author

Listed:
  • Crafts, Nicholas
  • Leunig, Tim
  • Mulatu, Abay

Abstract

This is a revised version of a previous working paper, of the same name, which incorporates corrections to errors in our estimates of TFP growth. This paper examines major privately-owned British railway companies before World War I. Quantitative evidence is presented on return on capital employed, total factor productivity growth, cost inefficiency, and speed of passenger services. There were discrepancies in performance across companies but ROCE and TFP typically fell during our period. Cost inefficiency rose before 1900 but then was brought under control as a profits collapse loomed. Without the discipline of either strong competition or effective regulation, managerial failure was common. This sector is an important qualification to the conventional wisdom that late-Victorian Britain did not fail.

Suggested Citation

  • Crafts, Nicholas & Leunig, Tim & Mulatu, Abay, 2010. "Were British railway companies well-managed in the early twentieth century?," Economic History Working Papers 27889, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:wpaper:27889
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27889/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1351-1408.
    2. Foreman-Peck, James & Millward, Robert, 1994. "Public and Private Ownership of British Industry 1820-1990," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198203599.
    3. Aghion, Ph. & Dewatripont, M. & Rey, P., 1997. "Corporate governance, competition policy and industrial policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 797-805, April.
    4. Broadberry,Stephen, 2009. "Market Services and the Productivity Race, 1850–2000," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521123143, October.
    5. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & William Greene, 2005. "Efficiency Measurement in Network Industries: Application to the Swiss Railway Companies," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 69-90, July.
    6. Leunig, Timothy, 2006. "Time is Money: A Re-Assessment of the Passenger Social Savings from Victorian British Railways," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(3), pages 635-673, September.
    7. William N. Goetzmann & Andrey D. Ukhov, 2006. "British Investment Overseas 1870-1913: A Modern Portfolio Theory Approach," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 10(2), pages 261-300.
    8. Stephen King, 1992. "What Is Privatisation?," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 11(3), pages 57-64, September.
    9. Kennedy, William & Delargy, Robert, 2000. "Explaining Victorian entrepreneurship: a cultural problem? A market problem? No problem?," Economic History Working Papers 22377, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    10. Dodgson J. S., 1993. "British Railway Cost Functions and Productivity Growth, 1900-1912," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 158-181, April.
    11. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R & Swanson, Joseph A, 1981. "Productivity Growth, Scale Economies, and Capacity Utilization in U.S. Railroads, 1955-74," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 994-1002, December.
    12. Nickell, Stephen & Nicolitsas, Daphne & Dryden, Neil, 1997. "What makes firms perform well?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 783-796, April.
    13. Greene, William, 2005. "Reconsidering heterogeneity in panel data estimators of the stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 269-303, June.
    14. Broadberry,Steve N., 2005. "The Productivity Race," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521023580, October.
    15. A. J. Arnold, 1999. "Profitability and capital accumulation in British industry during the transwar period, 1913–1924," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 52(1), pages 45-68, February.
    16. David Parker, 2004. "The UK's Privatisation Experiment: The Passage of Time Permits a Sober Assessment," CESifo Working Paper Series 1126, CESifo.
    17. Short, Helen, 1994. "Ownership, Control, Financial Structure and the Performance of Firms," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(3), pages 203-249, September.
    18. Crafts, Nicholas & Mills, Terence C. & Mulatu, Abay, 2007. "Total factor productivity growth on Britain's railways, 1852-1912: A reappraisal of the evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 608-634, October.
    19. Richard Green & Jonathan Haskel, 2004. "Seeking a Premier-League Economy: The Role of Privatization," NBER Chapters, in: Seeking a Premier Economy: The Economic Effects of British Economic Reforms, 1980–2000, pages 63-108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. John Vickers & George Yarrow, 1988. "Privatization: An Economic Analysis," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262720116, April.
    21. McCloskey, Donald N. & Sandberg, Lars G., 1971. "From damnation to redemption: Judgments on the late victorian entrepreneur," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 89-108.
    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. Brian Mitchell & David Chambers & Nick Crafts, 2011. "How good was the profitability of British railways, 1870–1912?," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(3), pages 798-831, August.
    2. Bogart, Dan & You, Xuesheng & Alvarez-Palau, Eduard J. & Satchell, Max & Shaw-Taylor, Leigh, 2022. "Railways, divergence, and structural change in 19th century England and Wales," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    3. Marchetti, Dalmo & Wanke, Peter F., 2019. "Efficiency in rail transport: Evaluation of the main drivers through meta-analysis with resampling," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 83-100.
    4. Nicholas Crafts & Timothy Leunig & Abay Mulatu, 2011. "Corrigendum: Were British railway companies well managed in the early twentieth century?," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(1), pages 351-356, February.
    5. Crafts, Nicholas, 2012. "British relative economic decline revisited: The role of competition," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 17-29.
    6. Bogart, Dan, 2010. "A global perspective on railway inefficiency and the rise of state ownership, 1880-1912," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 158-178, April.
    7. Turner, John D., 2024. "Three centuries of corporate governance in the UK," QUCEH Working Paper Series 24-01, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    8. Crafts, Nicholas, 2011. "British Relative Economic Decline Revisited," CEPR Discussion Papers 8384, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Campbell, Gareth, 2012. "Myopic rationality in a Mania," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 75-91.
    10. Mark Casson, 2014. "Government failures in railway public policy: the British case," Chapters, in: Francesco Forte & Ram Mudambi & Pietro Maria Navarra (ed.), A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 16, pages 368-399, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Marchetti, Dalmo & Wanke, Peter, 2017. "Brazil's rail freight transport: Efficiency analysis using two-stage DEA and cluster-driven public policies," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 26-42.

    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. Crafts, Nicholas & Mills, Terence C. & Mulatu, Abay, 2007. "Total factor productivity growth on Britain's railways, 1852-1912: A reappraisal of the evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 608-634, October.
    2. Crafts, Nicholas, 2012. "British relative economic decline revisited: The role of competition," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 17-29.
    3. Crafts, Nicholas, 2011. "British Relative Economic Decline Revisited," CEPR Discussion Papers 8384, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Brian Mitchell & David Chambers & Nick Crafts, 2011. "How good was the profitability of British railways, 1870–1912?," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(3), pages 798-831, August.
    5. Bogart, Dan, 2010. "A global perspective on railway inefficiency and the rise of state ownership, 1880-1912," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 158-178, April.
    6. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo, 2009. "An analysis of cost efficiency in Swiss multi-utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 306-315, March.
    7. Mulatu, Abay & Crafts, Nicholas, 2005. "Efficiency among private railway companies in a weakly regulated system: the case of Britain's railways in 1893-1912," Economic History Working Papers 22552, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    8. Crafts, Nicholas, 2020. "British Relative Economic Decline in the Aftermath of German Unification," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1295, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    9. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo & Kuenzle, Michael, 2007. "Cost efficiency in the Swiss gas distribution sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 64-78, January.
    10. Crafts, Nicholas, 2017. "The Postwar British Productivity Failure," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1142, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    11. Nicholas Crafts, 2013. "Returning to Growth: Policy Lessons from History," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 34(2), pages 255-282, June.
    12. Marianne Rubinstein, 2001. "Gouvernement d’entreprise et innovation," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 63(3), pages 211-229.
    13. Crafts, Nicholas, 2012. "Creating Competitive Advantage: Policy Lessons from History," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 91, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    14. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.
    15. Banfi, Silvia & Filippini, Massimo, 2010. "Resource rent taxation and benchmarking--A new perspective for the Swiss hydropower sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 2302-2308, May.
    16. Mehdi Farsi & Aurelio Fetz & Massimo Filippini, 2007. "Benchmarking and Regulation in the Electricity Distribution Sector," CEPE Working paper series 07-54, CEPE Center for Energy Policy and Economics, ETH Zurich.
    17. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio, 2003. "Cost Inefficiency in the English and Welsh Water Industry: An Heteroskedastic Stochastic Cost Frontier Approach," Economics Discussion Papers 8872, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    18. Timothy Leunig, 2003. "A British industrial success: productivity in the Lancashire and New England cotton spinning industries a century ago," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 56(1), pages 90-117, February.
    19. Zhang, Lin, 2017. "Correcting the uneven burden sharing of emission reduction across provinces in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 335-345.
    20. Massimo Filippini & Luis Orea, 2014. "Applications of the stochastic frontier approach in Energy Economics," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 35-42.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation

    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:ehl:wpaper:27889. 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: LSERO Manager on behalf of EH Dept. (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/chlseuk.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.