The Political Economy of Public Spending on Italian Rail Transport: A European View Cover Image

The Political Economy of Public Spending on Italian Rail Transport: A European View
The Political Economy of Public Spending on Italian Rail Transport: A European View

Author(s): Giacomo Di Foggia, Ugo Arrigo
Subject(s): Business Economy / Management, Public Administration, Recent History (1900 till today), Economic policy, Political economy, Fiscal Politics / Budgeting, Accounting - Business Administration
Published by: Reprograph
Keywords: Public expenditure; railways; state aid; public administration; political economy; transport policy; transport economics;

Summary/Abstract: The public expenditure on railways is largely unexplored in Europe. This is surprising because the size of government financial support to the industry is remarkable. Filling a dozen years of missing information, this paper rebuilds the total public spending on the Italian railway since 1992 making it comparable. This research complements a significant lack of information of public interest since these data have been published from 1966 until 2001, year of the last data release. From then the extent of public support to the industry has remained indefinite. Our results serve: scholars aimed at comparing such expenses with other countries, policy makers aimed at taking superior data-supported decisions when it comes to budgeting and industry professionals for intelligence purposes. Thus, reducing the long-lasting asymmetric information in this domain - a key threaten to the sector growth. Results of this paper enable a proper comparison of the government spending on railways among different countries such as Italy, France and Great Britain as an exercise.

  • Issue Year: XI/2016
  • Issue No: 40
  • Page Range: 192-195
  • Page Count: 4
  • Language: English