Friday, March 28, 2014

Dowd and Dobbin on Early US Railroading and Neo-Liberalism

Timothy J. Dowd, Emory University, and Frank Dobbin, Harvard University, have posted
Origins of the Myth of Neo-Liberalism: Regulation in the First Century of US Railroading, which appeared in The State, Regulation and the Economy: An Historical Perspective (Edward Elgar, 2001), 67-88.  Here is the abstract:
Neo-liberalism has two components. One is historical, and it revolves around the idea that advanced economies - particularly those of Britain and the US - developed under conditions that are best characterized as laissez-faire. The other is definitional, and it revolves around the idea that one group of industrial policies can be defined as 'non-interventionist.
Hat tip: Legal Theory Blog