The past thirty years have witnessed a transformation of government economic intervention in broad segments of industry throughout the world. Many industries historically subject to economic price and entry controls have been largely deregulated, including natural gas, trucking, airlines, and commercial banking. However, recent concerns about market power in restructured electricity markets, airline industry instability amid chronic financial stress, and the challenges created by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which allowed commercial banks to participate in investment banking, have led to calls for renewed market intervention. Economic Regulation and Its Reform collects research by a group of distinguished scholars who explore these and other issues surrounding government economic intervention. Determining the consequences of such intervention requires a careful assessment of the costs and benefits of imperfect regulation. Moreover, government interventions may take a variety of forms, from relatively nonintrusive performance-based regulations to more aggressive antitrust and competition policies and barriers to entry. This volume introduces the key issues surrounding economic regulation, provides an assessment of the economic effects of regulatory reforms over the past three decades, and examines how these insights bear on some of today’s most significant concerns in regulatory policy.

This primer provides a foundation for understanding the role of economic analysis in highway decision making. It is oriented toward state and local officials who have responsibility for assuring that limited resources get targeted to their best uses and who must publicly account for their decisions. Economic analysis is presented as an integral component of a comprehensive infrastructure management methodology that takes a long-term view of infrastructure performance and cost. The primer encompasses a full range of economic issues, including economic fundamentals, life-cycle cost analysis, benefit-cost analysis, forecasting traffic for benefit calculations, risk analysis and economic impact analysis.

This study of policy options for intermodal freight was initiated by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Executive Committee in 1995. The Executive Committee recognized that freight transportation is of critical importance to the United States and that intermodal freight transportation is one of the major technological and organizational trends affecting the performance of the sector. o conduct this study, TRB formed a committee, following National Research Council procedures to ensure a balance of points of view, that included members with expertise in intermodal freight transportation, state and local government transportation administration, and public policy. The committee's conclusions and recommendations are presented in this special report and cover four areas: Principles for government involvement; Federal surface transportation programs affecting freight; Regulatory and operations issues; and Public finance of intermodal freight projects. Also included are the five papers on special topics commissioned by the committee.