IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nzt/nztwps/99-10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Privatisation of New Zealand Rail

Author

Listed:
  • NZ Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation Inc

Abstract

The methodology for the study involves determining the nature and amount of economic welfare gains and losses resulting from the privatisation of New Zealand Rail, and the incidence among groups in society. The study measures the welfare change that is attributable to the change of ownership. To do this, the study assesses actual economic results against three “counterfactuals” - analyses of what would have happened if NZ Rail had stayed in public ownership. The study finds that welfare has increased from the privatisation of rail. This reflects the remarkable improvement in productivity that took place. It finds that government and taxpayers gained the most from privatisation because of the elimination of their commitment to funding rail losses under public ownership. For instance, it cost taxpayers over $1.1 billion to support NZ Rail between 1983 and 1993, and since the 1880s rail was corporatised five times under state ownership and each time the reorganisation failed to deliver a sustainable improvement. This paper has four parts: Part 1 - The Privatisation of New Zealand Rail ; Part 2 - Labour and Technology ; Part 3 - Quantitative Cost Benefit Analysis ; Part 4 - Owner Net Revenue: Government and Private

Suggested Citation

  • NZ Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation Inc, 1999. "The Privatisation of New Zealand Rail," Treasury Working Paper Series 99/10, New Zealand Treasury.
  • Handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:99/10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2018-01/twp99-10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrei Shleifer, 1998. "State versus Private Ownership," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 133-150, Fall.
    2. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    3. Anderson, Simon P. & de Palma, Andre & Thisse, Jacques-Francois, 1997. "Privatization and efficiency in a differentiated industry," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(9), pages 1635-1654, December.
    4. H. Valentine., 1935. "Some Aspects Of The Problem Of Railway Transport In New Zealand," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 10(1), pages 50-80, June.
    5. David Boles De Boer & Lewis Evans, 1996. "The Economic Efficiency of Telecommunications in a Deregulated Market: The case of New Zealand," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 72(216), pages 24-35, March.
    6. E. P. Neale, 1931. "The Railway Situation In New Zealand," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 7(1), pages 71-81, May.
    7. Catherine D. Wolfram, 1998. "Increases in Executive Pay Following Privatization," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(3), pages 327-361, September.
    8. Ann F. Friedlaender & Ernst R. Berndt & Gerard McCullough, 1992. "Governance Structure, Managerial Characteristics, and Firm Performance in the Deregulated Rail Industry," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 23(1992 Micr), pages 95-186.
    9. Erwin Diewert & Denis Lawrence, 1999. "Measuring New Zealand’s Productivity," Treasury Working Paper Series 99/05, New Zealand Treasury.
    10. Ian Harrison & Arthur Grimes, 1989. "Analysis of the economic rationale for the Government's asset sales programme," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 52, june.
    11. Evans, Lewis, 1998. "The Theory and Practice of Privatisation," Working Paper Series 3936, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation Inc., 1999. "The Privatization of New Zealand Rail Part 2: Quantitative Cost Benefit Analysis," Working Paper Series 3925, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    2. The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation, 1999. "The Privatization of New Zealand Rail Part 2: Quantitative Cost Benefit Analysis," Working Paper Series 19024, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    3. repec:vuw:vuwscr:19024 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Yan Li & Catherine Waddams Price, 2012. "Effect of Regulatory Reform on the Efficiency of Mobile Telecommunications," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2012-01, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    5. Jeffry M. Netter & William L. Megginson, 2001. "From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(2), pages 321-389, June.
    6. Evans, Lewis, 1998. "The Theory and Practice of Privatisation," Working Paper Series 3936, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    7. Wu, Aihua, 2017. "The signal effect of Government R&D Subsidies in China: Does ownership matter?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 339-345.
    8. Charalampos Karagiannakis & Elena Ketteni & Theofanis P. Mamuneas & Panos Pashardes, 2014. "Public vs Private: Electricity and Telecommunications in Europe," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 8(1), pages 53-70, June.
    9. Firth, Michael & Leung, Tak Yan & Rui, Oliver M., 2010. "Justifying top management pay in a transitional economy," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 852-866, December.
    10. Stefan Buehler & Simon Wey, 2014. "When Do State-Owned Firms Crowd Out Private Investment?," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 319-330, September.
    11. Quigley, Neil & Evans, Lewis, 1998. "Common Elements in the Governance of Deregulated Electricity Markets, Telecommunications Market and Payment Systems," Working Paper Series 3938, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    12. Firth, Michael & Fung, Peter M.Y. & Rui, Oliver M., 2007. "How ownership and corporate governance influence chief executive pay in China's listed firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 776-785, July.
    13. Joskow, Paul L. & Rose, Nancy L. & Shepard, Andrea., 1993. "Regulatory constraints on executive compensation," Working papers 3550-93., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    14. Alex Bryson & John Forth & Minghai Zhou, 2014. "Same or Different? The CEO Labour Market in China's Public Listed Companies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(574), pages 90-108, February.
    15. Firth, Michael & Leung, Tak Yan & Rui, Oliver M. & Na, Chaohong, 2015. "Relative pay and its effects on firm efficiency in a transitional economy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 59-77.
    16. repec:dau:papers:123456789/3860 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Juan Pablo Atal & José Ignacio Cuesta & Felipe González & Cristóbal Otero, 2024. "The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(3), pages 615-644, March.
    18. Haikun Zhu, 2018. "Social Stability and Resource Allocation within Business Groups," Working Papers Series 79, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    19. Ashantha Ranasinghe & Xuejuan Su, 2023. "When social assistance meets market power: A mixed duopoly view of health insurance in the United States," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 851-869, October.
    20. Willmore, Larry, 2008. "Basic education as a human right redux," MPRA Paper 40478, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Firm Growth, Institutions and Structural Transformation," Ratio Working Papers 150, The Ratio Institute.
    22. Anja Schöttner & Veikko Thiele, 2010. "Promotion Tournaments and Individual Performance Pay," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 699-731, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:99/10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CSS Web and Publishing, The Treasury (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tregvnz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.