The Costs of Price Regulation: Lessons from Railroad Deregulation

Previous calculations of the costs of railroad rate regulation assumed that deregulation would lower railroad rate levels and allow railroads to capture significant amounts of traffic from other modes of transportation. This article presents empirical results that show that neither of these effects materialized under deregulation. A calculation based on actual price and market share changes places the annual cost of regulation at roughly $90 million, well below previous estimates.