Private and public enterprise in Europe : energy, telecommunications and transport, 1830-1990 / Robert Millward.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-343) and index.

pt. I. Introduction. Ideology, technology and economic policy -- pt. II. The construction of the new European infrastructure c. 1830-1914. Infrastructure development and rights of way in the early nineteenth century -- Local supply networks, private concessions and municipalisation -- Railways and telegraph: economic growth and national unification -- Electricity supply, tramways and new regulatory regimes c. 1870-1914 -- pt. III. Nations and Networks c. 1914-1945. Infrastructure development from the nineteenth to the twentieth century: an overall perspective -- The development of telecommunications -- Network integration in electricity supply: successes and failures -- Railway finances and road-rail competition -- pt. IV. State Enterprise c. 1945-1990. The new state, economic organisation and planning -- Coal, oil and security -- Airline regulation and the transport revolution -- Telecommunications 1950-1990: from calm to storm -- Economic policy, financial accountability and productivity growth -- pt. V. Conclusions. The road to deregulation and privatisation? -- Appendix: Infrastructure service levels and public ownership c. 1910: a statistical analysis.

This is the first comparative history of the economic organisation of energy, telecommunications and transport in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines the role that private and public enterprise have played in the construction and operation of the railways; electricity, gas and water supply; tramways; coal, oil and natural gas industries; telegraph, telephone, computer networks and other modern telecommunications. The book begins with the arrival of the railways in the 1830s, charts the development of arm's-length regulation, municipalisation and nationalisation, and ends on the eve of privatisation in the 1980s. Robert Millward argues that the role of ideology, especially in the form of debates about socialism and capitalism, has been exaggerated. Instead the driving forces in changes in economic organisation were economic and technological factors and the book traces their influence in shaping the pattern of regulation and ownership of these key sectors of modern economies.

Print version record; series from resource webpage.

English.

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