The Staggers Act and Firm Performance: Long-Run Evidence

One of the primary purposes of the Staggers Act of 1980 was to increase the profitability of the railroad industry. The paper examines the industry’s financial performance from 1963 to 2013 and provides evidence that railroads outperformed most other industries from pre- to post-deregulation using accounting-based measures. However, using a market-based measure, the railroad industry underperforms two-thirds of industries. Additionally, the post-Staggers accounting performance improvements were not at the expense of firms from commodity groups that are reliant on rail transportation. Importantly, there exists considerable skewness and heterogeneity across measures, which affects the effectiveness of inferences that are based on the mean of the distribution to reflect economic reality.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1007/s11151-016-9522-3
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/0889938X
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018.
• Authors:
  • Pinkowitz, Lee
  • Williamson, Rohan
• Publication Date: 2016-9

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Appendices; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 161-202
• Serial:
  • Review of Industrial Organization
  • Volume: 49
  • Issue Number: 2
  • Publisher: Springer Publishing
  • ISSN: 0889-938X
  • EISSN: 1532-7027
  • Serial URL: https://link.springer.com/journal/11151

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Deregulation; Economic analysis; Financial analysis; History; Industries; Profitability; Railroads
• Identifier Terms: Staggers Rail Act of 1980
• Subject Areas: Economics; Finance; Freight Transportation; Law; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01677580
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 9 2018 5:24PM