IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lec/leecon/09-7.html

Toc ’n’ Roll: Bargaining, Service Quality and Specificity in the UK Railway Network

Author

Listed:
  • Gianni De Fraja

  • Emanuela Michetti
  • Piercarlo Zanchettin

Abstract

The paper studies the regulatory design in an industry where the regulated downstream provider of services to final consumers purchases the necessary inputs from an upstream supplier. The model is closely inspired by the UK regulatory mechanism for the railway network. Its philosophy is one of vertical separation between ownership and operation of the rolling stock: the Train Operating Company (TOC) leases from a ROlling Stock COmpany (ROSCO) the trains it uses in its franchise. This, we show, increases the flexibility and competitiveness of the network. On the other hand, it also reduces the specificity of the rolling stock, thus increasing the cost of running the service, and the TOC’s incentive to exert quality enhancing effort, thus reducing the utility of the final users. Our simple model shows that the UK regime of separation may in fact be preferable from a welfare viewpoint.

Suggested Citation

  • Gianni De Fraja & Emanuela Michetti & Piercarlo Zanchettin, 2009. "Toc ’n’ Roll: Bargaining, Service Quality and Specificity in the UK Railway Network," Discussion Papers in Economics 09/7, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    • Handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:09/7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.le.ac.uk/economics/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp09-7.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gianni De Fraja & Alberto Iozzi, 2008. "The Quest for Quality: A Quality Adjusted Dynamic Regulatory Mechanism," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(4), pages 1011-1040, December.
    2. Yvrande-Billon, Anne & Menard, Claude, 2005. "Institutional constraints and organizational changes: the case of the British rail reform," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 675-699, April.
    3. Luisa Affuso & David Newbery, 2002. "The Impact of Structural and Contractual Arrangements on a Vertically Separated Railway," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 33(1), pages 83-92.
    4. Newbery, David M., 1997. "Privatisation and liberalisation of network utilities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 357-383, April.
    5. Jean Tirole, 1999. "Incomplete Contracts: Where Do We Stand?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(4), pages 741-782, July.
    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. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Bordignon, Stephen & Littlechild, Stephen, 2012. "The Hunter Valley access undertaking: Elements of a negotiated settlement," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 179-187.

    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. Spagnolo, Giancarlo & Calzolari, Giacomo, 2009. "Relational Contracts and Competitive Screening," CEPR Discussion Papers 7434, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. McCartney, Sean & Stittle, John, 2012. "‘Engines of Extravagance’: The privatised British railway rolling stock industry," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 153-167.
    3. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Bruno Deffains, 2007. "Uncertainty of Law and the Legal Process," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(4), pages 627-656, December.
    4. Sharon Novak & Scott Stern, 2009. "Complementarity Among Vertical Integration Decisions: Evidence from Automobile Product Development," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(2), pages 311-332, February.
    5. Alessandro Ferrari & Lorenzo Pesaresi, 2025. "Specialization, Complexity & Resilience in Supply Chains," Papers 2509.08981, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.
    6. Freddy Huet & Simon Porcher, 2013. "Innovation and regulatory outcomes: evidence from the public-private contracts for water supply in France," Chapters, in: Mehmet Ugur (ed.), Governance, Regulation and Innovation, chapter 9, pages 216-236, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2005. "Allocating Control in Agency Problems with Limited Liability and Sequential Hidden Actions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(2), pages 318-336, Summer.
    8. Shachat, Jason & Walker, Matthew J. & Wei, Lijia, 2024. "Contingent payments in procurement interactions: Experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    9. Alan Schwartz, 2004. "The Law and Economics of Costly Contracting," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 2-31, April.
    10. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2000. "Book Review of “Inflation and the Enforcement of Contracts” (Renner, 1999)," MPRA Paper 6971, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. B. Boockmann & Paul Thurner, 2006. "Flexibility provisions in multilateral environmental treaties," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 113-135, June.
    12. Theo Notteboom & Jean-Paul Rodrigue, 2023. "Maritime container terminal infrastructure, network corporatization, and global terminal operators: Implications for international business policy," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 6(1), pages 67-83, March.
    13. Nick Wills‐Johnson, 2008. "Separability and Subadditivity in Australian Railways," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(264), pages 95-108, March.
    14. Scemama, Pierre & Levrel, Harold, 2019. "Influence of the Organization of Actors in the Ecological Outcomes of Investment in Restoration of Biodiversity," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 71-79.
    15. Rachael Goodhue & Leo Simon, 2016. "Agricultural contracts, adverse selection, and multiple inputs," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-33, December.
    16. Douglas Cumming & Grant Fleming & Armin Schwienbacher, 2009. "Style Drift in Private Equity," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(5‐6), pages 645-678, June.
    17. Jahn, Elke J. & Wagner, Thomas, 2001. "Labour's law?," Discussion Papers 6, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair of Labour and Regional Economics.
    18. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2013. "Job design with conflicting tasks reconsidered," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 108-117.
    19. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2013. "Incomplete contracts and optimal ownership of public goods," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 94-96.
    20. Mufaddal Baxamusa & Sudip Datta & Anand Jha, 2021. "Does policy uncertainty increase relational risks? Evidence from strategic alliances," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(3), pages 645-689, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L5 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy
    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation

    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:lec:leecon:09/7. 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: Abbie Sleath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deleiuk.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.