Competition policy and railway investment: Project summary

This project sought to examine the impacts of National Competition Policy (NCP) on investment in Australian general freight and passenger railways, and more generally to assess the rationale underlying NCP and related economic reforms applied to Australian railways. It does not appear that NCP and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wills-Johnson, Nick
Format: Working Paper
Published: Transport Economics Forum 2007
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.patrec.org/publication_docs/27_projsum.pdf
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46513
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author Wills-Johnson, Nick
author_facet Wills-Johnson, Nick
author_sort Wills-Johnson, Nick
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This project sought to examine the impacts of National Competition Policy (NCP) on investment in Australian general freight and passenger railways, and more generally to assess the rationale underlying NCP and related economic reforms applied to Australian railways. It does not appear that NCP and related reforms have yet had a negative impact on investment. Indeed, vertical separation may have improved investment, at least that being sourced from the public sector. However, there are some intrinsic issues associated with the application of economic regulation which could in the future retard investment, and with the predominantly public sector origin of much of recent investment. In particular, the case for economic reform seems to be weakly made: there are few rents of the type economic regulation can moderate in the logistics chains served by rail in Australia, and there seems only limited scope for sustainable competition in the above-rail task.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-465132017-01-30T15:27:41Z Competition policy and railway investment: Project summary Wills-Johnson, Nick competition policy railway investment This project sought to examine the impacts of National Competition Policy (NCP) on investment in Australian general freight and passenger railways, and more generally to assess the rationale underlying NCP and related economic reforms applied to Australian railways. It does not appear that NCP and related reforms have yet had a negative impact on investment. Indeed, vertical separation may have improved investment, at least that being sourced from the public sector. However, there are some intrinsic issues associated with the application of economic regulation which could in the future retard investment, and with the predominantly public sector origin of much of recent investment. In particular, the case for economic reform seems to be weakly made: there are few rents of the type economic regulation can moderate in the logistics chains served by rail in Australia, and there seems only limited scope for sustainable competition in the above-rail task. 2007 Working Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46513 http://www.patrec.org/publication_docs/27_projsum.pdf Transport Economics Forum restricted
spellingShingle competition policy
railway investment
Wills-Johnson, Nick
Competition policy and railway investment: Project summary
title Competition policy and railway investment: Project summary
title_full Competition policy and railway investment: Project summary
title_fullStr Competition policy and railway investment: Project summary
title_full_unstemmed Competition policy and railway investment: Project summary
title_short Competition policy and railway investment: Project summary
title_sort competition policy and railway investment: project summary
topic competition policy
railway investment
url http://www.patrec.org/publication_docs/27_projsum.pdf
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46513