[en] Over the last decades, the rail sector has seen considerable reform in the European Union (EU). The overreaching goal has been to revitalise this sector and to make it more competitive to attract traffic from firms operating in other transport markets. By retrieving information from the OECD’s ETCR database, this paper focuses on the rail freight service market and answers the following research question: have liberalisation reform policies increased the market share of rail freight services in the EU? By contributing to the existing literature on the empirical assessment of liberalisation policies in the EU, our findings indicate a positive impact of liberalisation on the market shares of rail freight services. Nevertheless, the paper suggests that merely relying on these policies to sustain the economic growth of rail-freight firms might not suffice alone and that might be important to combine them with other policy solutions such as more environmental-friendly regulations.
Disciplines :
European & international law Political science, public administration & international relations Business & economic sciences: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Author, co-author :
Esposito, Giovanni ; Université de Liège - ULiège > HEC Liège : UER > UER Management : Sustainable Strategy
Cicatiello, Lorenzo; University of Naples "L'Orientale" > Human and Social Sciences
Ercolano, Salvatore; University of Basilicata > Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics
Language :
English
Title :
Reforming railways in the EU: An empirical assessment of liberalisation policies in the European rail freight market
Publication date :
2020
Journal title :
Transportation Research. Part A, Policy and Practice
Abbott, M., Bruce, C., The privatization and de-privatization of rail industry assets in Australia and New Zealand. Utilities Policies 41 (2016), 48–56.
Bacchiocchi, E., Florio, M., Taveggia, G., Asymmetric effects of electricity regulatory reforms in the EU15 and in the New Member States: empirical evidence from residential prices 1990–2011. Utilities Policy 35 (2015), 72–90.
Ballou, R.H., Business Logistics Management: Planning, Organizing and Controlling the Supply Chain. 1999, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Baumol, W.J., Vinod, H.D., An Inventory Theoretic Model of Freight Transport Demand. Management Science 16:7 (1970), 413–421.
Beck, N., Katz, J.N., What to do (and not to do) with time-series cross-section data. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 89:03 (1995), 634–647, 10.2307/2082979.
Beria, P., Quinet, E., de Rusc, G., Schulze, C., A comparison of rail liberalisation levels across four European countries. Res. Transp. Econ., 2012, 110–120.
Blauwens, G., Vandaele, N., Van de Voorde, E., Vernimmen, B., Witlox, F., Towards a modal shift in freight transport? A business logistics analysis of some policy measures. Transp. Rev. 26:2 (2006), 239–251, 10.1080/01441640500335565.
CEC, Commission of the European Communities, 1996. White Paper – a strategy to revitalise the community's railways. Commission of the European Communities, COM(96)421final, July.
CEC, Commission of the European Communities, 2001. White Paper - European transport policy for 2010: time to decide. Commission of the European Communities, COM(2001)370, Brussels, September.Engström, R. (2016). The roads’ role in the freight transport system. Transp. Res. Procedia 1443–1452.
Clò, S., Ferraris, M., Florio, M., Ownership and environmental regulation: evidence from the European electricity industry. Energy Econ. 61 (2017), 298–312.
Esposito, G., Doleschel, J., Kaloud, T., Urban-Kozlowska, J., The changing nature of railways in Europe: empirical evidence on prices, investments and quality. Florio, M., (eds.) The Reform of Network Industries: Evaluating Privatisation, Regulation and Liberalisation in the EU, 2017, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, 171–196.
Esposito, G., Ferlie, E., Gaeta, G.L., The European public sectors in the age of Managerialism. Politics 38:4 (2018), 480–499.
Esposito, G., Gaeta, G.L., Trasciani, G., Administrative change in the EU: a cross-country empirical study on the contextual determinants of NPM reform rhetoric. Ann. Public Cooper. Econ. 88:3 (2017), 323–344.
Florio, M., Network Industries and Social Welfare. 2013, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Florio, M., The Reform of Network Industries: Evaluating Privatisation, Regulation and Liberalisation in the EU, 2017, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK.
Friebel, G., Ivaldi, M., Vibes, C., 2003. Railway (de) regulation: A European efficiency. University of Toulouse: IDEI report no 3 on passenger rail transport.
Givoni, M., Brand, C., Watkiss, P., Are railways 'Climate Friendly'?. Built Environ. 35:1 (2009), 70–86.
Gomez, J., Vassallo, J.M., Has heavy vehicle tolling in Europe been effective in reducing road freight transport and promoting modal shift?. Transportation, 1–28, 2018, 10.1007/s11116-018-9922-3.
Hesse, M., Rodrigue, J.P., The transport geography of logistics and freight distribution. J. Transp. Geogr., 2004, 171–184.
Hoen, K.M.R., Tan, T., Fransoo, J.C., Van Houtum, G.J., Effect of carbon emission regulations on transport mode selection under stochastic demand. Flexible Serv. Manuf. J. 26:1–2 (2014), 170–195, 10.1007/s10696-012-9151-6.
Im, K.S., Pesaran, M.H., Shin, Y., Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels. J. Economet. 115:1 (2003), 53–74, 10.1016/S0304-4076(03)00092-7.
Levin, A., Lin, C.-F., James Chu, C.-S., Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties. J. Economet. 108:1 (2002), 1–24, 10.1016/S0304-4076(01)00098-7.
Lowe, P., Pucinskaite, I., Webster, W., Lindberg, P., Effective unbundling of energy transmission networks: lessons from the energy sector inquiry. Compet. Policy Newsletter, 1(1–2), 2007.
Maddala, G.S., Wu, S., A comparative study of unit root tests with panel data and a new simple test. Oxford Bull. Econ. Stat. 61:s1 (2003), 631–652, 10.1111/1468-0084.0610s1631.
McKinnon, A., Life without trucks: the impact of a temporary disruption of road freight transport on a national economy. J. Bus. Logist., 2006, 227–250.
Nash, C., Passenger railway reform in the last 20 years – European experience. Res. Transp. Econ., 2008, 61–70.
Nash, C., Rivera-Trujillo, C., Rail Regulatory Reform in Europe: Principle and Practices. 2004, MIMEO Series, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds.
North, D., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. 1990, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge.
North, D., 1998. Where have we been and where are we going? In: Ben-Ner, Dans A., Putterman, L. (Eds.), Economics, Values and Organization. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, pp. 491–508.
Pellegrini, P., Rodriguez, J., Single European sky and single European railway area: A system level analysis of air and rail transportation. Transp. Res. Part A: Policy Pract. 57 (2013), 64–83.
Rodrigue, J.P., Comtois, C., Slack, B., The Geography of Transport Systems. 2013, Routledge, New York.
Sampaio, P.R.P., Daychoum, M.T., Two decades of rail regulatory reform in Brazil (1996–2016). Utilities Policy 49 (2017), 93–103.
Tang, S., Lo, H.K., The impact of public transport policy on the viability and sustainability of mass railway transit – the Hong Kong experience. Transp. Res. Part A 42:4 (2008), 563–576.
Thomas, S., A Critique of the European Commission's Evidence of the Need for Ownership Unbundling of Energy Networks. 2007, Greenwich University, PSIRU.
Torriti, J., Impact assessment and the liberalization of the EU energy markets: evidence-based policy-making or policy-based evidence-making?. J. Common Market Stud. 48:4 (2010), 1065–1081.
Wooldridge, J.M., 2010. Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data. Cambridge. The MIT Press, MA. Retrieved from http://fin.shufe.edu.cn/fe/Books & Links/Wooldridge Econometric analysis.pdf.
