This authoritative new collection gathers together the issues important to the understanding of the challenges and problems of modern rail transport. Part I includes articles on costs and productivity, part II discusses pricing and part III looks at regulation and privatisation. Part IV examines econometric rail demand models. Part V focuses on disaggregate choice modelling and part VI covers investment. The editors have included not only classic papers by Griliches, Keeler and Caves et al on cost functions, Baumol on pricing and regulation and Foster and Beesley on investment, but also lesser known papers which pioneer up to date methods. Together these form a valuable collection of previously published articles which will be of interest to researchers and policy analysts in the industry and to academics and students specialising in rail transport policy and economics.

This book argues that journalism should treat itself as an academic discipline on a par with history, geography and sociology, and as an art form in its own right. Time, space, social relations and imagination are intrinsic to journalism. Chris Nash takes the major flaws attributed to journalism by its critics-a crude empiricism driven by an un-reflexive 'news sense'; a narrow focus on a de-contextualised, transient present; and a too intimate familiarity with powerful sources-and treats them as methodological challenges. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of Pierre Bourdieu, David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Gaye Tuchman, he explores the ways in which rigorous journalism practice can be theorised to meet these challenges. The argument proceeds through detailed case studies of work by two leading iconoclasts-the artist Hans Haacke and the 20th century journalist I.F. Stone. This deeply provocative and original study concludes that the academic understanding of journalism is fifty years behind its practice, and that it is long past time for scholars and practitioners to think about journalism as a disciplinary research practice. Drawing on an award-winning professional career and over three decades teaching journalism practice and theory, Chris Nash makes these ideas accessible to a broad readership among scholars, graduate students and thoughtful journalists looking for ways to expand the intellectual range of their work.

The debate on rail privatisation often seems to focus on very narrow issues. Those on both sides of the argument seem to be able to employ a mass of statistics to prove their point. Proponents of privatisation suggest, with some credibility, that all was reasonably well with the privatised railways until the Hatfield disaster. Opponents point to spiralling costs since privatisation. The authors of this monograph examine privatisation in the context of the long history of continual government intervention. The government imposed upon the industry a particular structure - separation of track and wheel. It also wrapped it up in increasing amounts of regulation. After examining the history of government intervention in the railways and the privatisation process, the authors of this monograph then examine the future of railway policy. Should the industry be allowed to evolve its own structure - remerging the ownership of track and wheel if it wishes? What aspects of a railway should be regulated? Who should own the various parts of the infrastructure? This monograph is essential reading for all with an interest in railway policy and the process of privatisation.