The Economics of Cost Recovery in Transport

摘要

There have periodically been sea changes in the way in which the economic regulation of transport has been viewed. While the traditional divide between the 'Continental' philosophy of regulation - whereby regulation is seen as the norm to achieve wide socio-political goals and markets only adopted when this is coincidental with these goals - and the 'Anglo-Saxon' philosophy - with its neo-classical economic emphasis on the need to ensure markets are allowed to work efficiently and unencumbered by regulators — still exists, the focus has shifted very much towards the latter. We have moved into what Denis Swann and I (Button and Swann, 1989) once called the Age of Deregulation. Since the deregulation of the US domestic airline industry in 1978, there has been a global trend towards market liberalisation and privatisation with the transport sector being particularly affected. The changes that have occurred have, most economists would seem to agree, been broadly beneficial. There has been a general downward trend in transport costs and the use of transport services has risen indicating the revealed preferences of potential users. The US term 'deregulation', although quite widely used, is, however, something of an exaggeration. There remain many generic regulations covering such things as mergers policy, labour conditions, as well as a plethora of safety, security, and environmental regulations.