Railroad Economics at the Western Economic Association International Annual Meeting

On July 1, 2016, Professor John Mayo chaired a session on railroad economics for the Transportation and Public Utilities Group at the 91st Annual Conference of the Western Economic Association International, held in Portland Oregon. He also presented work in progress with co-author Professor Jeffrey Macher, “The Evolution of Contracting: Evidence from the Deregulated Freight Rail Industry.” The work, using a rich dataset of the STB unmasked carload waybill samples from 1984 to 2014, covers the evolution of rail contracts in response to market changes in the wake of post-Staggers deregulation.

The session also included presentations by David H. Austin (CBO); Wesley W. Wilson (Oregon) and Frank Wolak (Stanford); and Elvis Ndembe (NDSU).