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Legislative oversight and sunset review: The Texas Railroad Commission and trucking regulation.
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the ICC by strategic appointments to effect administrative deregulation of transportation; (ii) railroads will continue to be regulated to some extent; and (iii) the rail regulatory functions will continue to reside with the ICC, which will continue to exist, although reduced in size.
Legislative oversight and sunset review: The Texas Railroad Commission and trucking regulation. McKeever, Robin Sue, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 1989. 240 pp. Supervisor: Matthew D. McCubbins Order Number DA9005627 For many years, centralized oversight has been criticised heavily as an ineffective means of legislative control of executive agency policy decisions. This study challenges that view with an institutional analysis of the thesis that sunset review is effective to the extent that it is designed to change the policy choice status quo. To the extent that the usual legislative process is rearranged by sunset review, more reform opportunities are created for legislative entrepreneurs. Since more reform opportunities increase the probability for change, new incentives are created for agency cooperation and anticipation of legislative preferences. Strong and weak sunset systems are comprised of different combinations of possible variables which rearrange the usual legislative process, the most basic being a statutory termination date. Attaching the termination date to agencies rather than to individual programs can dramatically increase the number of reform opportunities. Two other major variables which break the status quo are changes in committee policy jurisdictions and the statutory creation of a legislative agency to perform sunset evaluations. Sunset review opens the policy process by admitting new players to key decisions. Greater legislative control occurs through increased participatory democracy. Analysis of the relationship between the Texas legislature and the Railroad Commission prior to sunset review, and the development of two 1983 sunset amendments which were significant trucking regulation reforms provides evidence for the conclusion that sunset review can be an effective method of centralized oversight.
Railroad common costs and facility abandonments. Bolema, Theodore Robert, Ph.D. Michigan State University, 1989. 102 pp. Order Number DA8923833 Allocating railroad common costs to specific traffic flows is an old problem in the economics literature. Recently, economists and the Interstate Commerce Commission have given high priority to avoiding cross-subsidization of one set of shippers by another set of shippers when allocating these common costs.
Reviews
39
Under the current regulatory institutions: the problem of avoiding cross-subsidization can better be understood as a problem of finding a cost allocation which leads to the shipment of the most efficient traffic quantities over the most efficient transportation network configuration. The existing economic literature on this problem generally assumes no abandonment of transportation facilities. This assumption may have been appropriate earlier in this century, when rail links were abandoned far less frequently. Under this assumption, the problem of recovering the common costs of maintaining and operating the rail network with no abandonment of track (except in the case of failing railroads) is basically the familiar natural monopoly cost recovery problem. However, assuming no facility abandonments is inappropriate today because of the large number of track miles which have been abandoned during the 1970s and 1980s. When a cost allocation is found which encourages carriers and shippers to transport the most efficient shipment quantities over the most efficient network, then that cost allocation is nonsubsidizing. A procedure for finding such a cost allocation is found and applied to a sample from the 1984 Michigan rail shipments. It was found to be Pareto efficient to abandon some Michigan facilities and reroute some shipments over the remaining rail links.
Transportation services and innovation in the housing industry: A study of the relations between transportation and production. Souleyrette, Reginald Roy II, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1989. 202 pp. Chairman: William L. Garrison Order Number DA90065 17 Innovations improve the organization of production and provide new products and services. While it is accepted that economies are stimulated by innovations, the role of transportation improvement in stimulating innovation has not been sufficiently examined. This role is examined in this study. A methodology for examination of the contribution of transportation improvements to production is presented. Residential housing construction is chosen as the sector of production for study. This sector is large and important, is generally considered to be experiencing reduced or negative productivity growth, and is transportation-intensive. This thesis begins with an analysis of conventional productivity studies. These studies fall short in their attempts to explain productivity changes. An examination of the long history of housing construction reveals that productivity changes have resulted from the adoption of innovations, innovations enabled by improvements in transportation. Following a discussion of innovation theory, a list of housing innovations and a typology for their classification is presented. From the list, drywall construction is chosen as a case study. To provide a temporal frame for
the ICC by strategic appointments to effect administrative deregulation of transportation; (ii) railroads will continue to be regulated to some extent; and (iii) the rail regulatory functions will continue to reside with the ICC, which will continue to exist, although reduced in size.
Legislative oversight and sunset review: The Texas Railroad Commission and trucking regulation. McKeever, Robin Sue, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 1989. 240 pp. Supervisor: Matthew D. McCubbins Order Number DA9005627 For many years, centralized oversight has been criticised heavily as an ineffective means of legislative control of executive agency policy decisions. This study challenges that view with an institutional analysis of the thesis that sunset review is effective to the extent that it is designed to change the policy choice status quo. To the extent that the usual legislative process is rearranged by sunset review, more reform opportunities are created for legislative entrepreneurs. Since more reform opportunities increase the probability for change, new incentives are created for agency cooperation and anticipation of legislative preferences. Strong and weak sunset systems are comprised of different combinations of possible variables which rearrange the usual legislative process, the most basic being a statutory termination date. Attaching the termination date to agencies rather than to individual programs can dramatically increase the number of reform opportunities. Two other major variables which break the status quo are changes in committee policy jurisdictions and the statutory creation of a legislative agency to perform sunset evaluations. Sunset review opens the policy process by admitting new players to key decisions. Greater legislative control occurs through increased participatory democracy. Analysis of the relationship between the Texas legislature and the Railroad Commission prior to sunset review, and the development of two 1983 sunset amendments which were significant trucking regulation reforms provides evidence for the conclusion that sunset review can be an effective method of centralized oversight.
Railroad common costs and facility abandonments. Bolema, Theodore Robert, Ph.D. Michigan State University, 1989. 102 pp. Order Number DA8923833 Allocating railroad common costs to specific traffic flows is an old problem in the economics literature. Recently, economists and the Interstate Commerce Commission have given high priority to avoiding cross-subsidization of one set of shippers by another set of shippers when allocating these common costs.
Reviews
39
Under the current regulatory institutions: the problem of avoiding cross-subsidization can better be understood as a problem of finding a cost allocation which leads to the shipment of the most efficient traffic quantities over the most efficient transportation network configuration. The existing economic literature on this problem generally assumes no abandonment of transportation facilities. This assumption may have been appropriate earlier in this century, when rail links were abandoned far less frequently. Under this assumption, the problem of recovering the common costs of maintaining and operating the rail network with no abandonment of track (except in the case of failing railroads) is basically the familiar natural monopoly cost recovery problem. However, assuming no facility abandonments is inappropriate today because of the large number of track miles which have been abandoned during the 1970s and 1980s. When a cost allocation is found which encourages carriers and shippers to transport the most efficient shipment quantities over the most efficient network, then that cost allocation is nonsubsidizing. A procedure for finding such a cost allocation is found and applied to a sample from the 1984 Michigan rail shipments. It was found to be Pareto efficient to abandon some Michigan facilities and reroute some shipments over the remaining rail links.
Transportation services and innovation in the housing industry: A study of the relations between transportation and production. Souleyrette, Reginald Roy II, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1989. 202 pp. Chairman: William L. Garrison Order Number DA90065 17 Innovations improve the organization of production and provide new products and services. While it is accepted that economies are stimulated by innovations, the role of transportation improvement in stimulating innovation has not been sufficiently examined. This role is examined in this study. A methodology for examination of the contribution of transportation improvements to production is presented. Residential housing construction is chosen as the sector of production for study. This sector is large and important, is generally considered to be experiencing reduced or negative productivity growth, and is transportation-intensive. This thesis begins with an analysis of conventional productivity studies. These studies fall short in their attempts to explain productivity changes. An examination of the long history of housing construction reveals that productivity changes have resulted from the adoption of innovations, innovations enabled by improvements in transportation. Following a discussion of innovation theory, a list of housing innovations and a typology for their classification is presented. From the list, drywall construction is chosen as a case study. To provide a temporal frame for