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The purpose of this paper is to measure the efficiencies of parallel subsystems with shared inputs/outputs. Each subsystem has not only a set of common inputs and outputs, but also some dedicated inputs and outputs as well as some shared inputs and outputs. A more general data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach is proposed to deal with this efficiency evaluation issue. Based on the proposed approach, mechanisms for shared inputs/outputs distribution and efficiency decomposition among sub-units are presented.

To evaluate the efficiency of the parallel systems, this paper proposes a centralized DEA approach by assuming that the same input/output factor in a decision-making unit (DMU) has the same multiplier for all its sub-units. Furthermore, different proportions of shared inputs/outputs are imposed on sub-units within different DMUs in evaluating each DMU’s efficiency. The proposed approach is applied to evaluate the operational efficiencies of 18 railway firms in China.

By using the proposed DEA approach, the efficiencies of the whole DMU and its sub-units can be measured at the same time, and the optimal allocation strategy of shared inputs/outputs can also be obtained. The proposed model is more reasonable and robust for measuring the operational performance of parallel systems with shared inputs and outputs. The efficiency of railway system in China is relatively low, and its inefficiency is largely caused by lower freight transportation performance. Great disparities among firms can be found in the passenger transportation efficiency and freight transportation efficiency.

This study develops the DEA model under the assumption of constant returns to scale, which can be directly extended to a situation with variable returns to scale.

In this paper, the proposed approach is a more effective way to evaluate the efficiencies of parallel systems with shared inputs/outputs. With respect to the application, to improve the overall efficiency of China’s railway system, more efforts should be taken to improve its operational performance of freight transportation. Furthermore, firms’ disparities should also be considered when making these related policies.

The proposed approach can evaluate the whole DMU and its sub-units at the same time. Considering simultaneously the common/dedicated/shared inputs/outputs, the proposed approach is more general than the existing approaches in the literature. In the described approach, the same type of input or output is assumed to have the same weight for all sub-units within one DMU. More importantly, the proposed model imposes different proportions of shared inputs/outputs on different DMUs’ sub-units when measuring the efficiency for each DMU.

Analyses the freightliner container system with the inception of British Rail's development of its land‐based system. Examines, from the point of view of new product marketing, the development of freightliner marketing strategies. Purports that it is clear that the railway can in no sense be regarded as a monopoly concern in freight transport, as British Rail's main competitor is the road haulier – although coastal shipping, and firms operating their own road vehicles, are major competitors for certain types of traffic. Discusses the various types of licence used, for the different weights of transport involved. Contends that the freightliner system is a very effective mode of transport over long distances, and it will assume an increasingly important role in the changing distributive requirements of industry.

This study aims to investigate how opening high-speed railways affects the cost of debt financing based on China's background.

Using panel data on Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2017, this study constructs a quasi-natural experiment and adopts a difference-in-difference model with multiple time periods to empirically examine the relation between the high-speed railway openings and debt financing cost.

Our results show that opening high-speed railways reduces the cost of debt financing, and this negative correlation is more significant in non-state firms, firms with weaker internal control, and firms that hire non-Big Four auditors. Besides, we explore the impact mechanisms and find that opening high-speed railways improves analyst attention, institutional investor participation, and information disclosure quality, which in turn lowers the cost of debt financing.

The results imply that the opening of high-speed railways helps to alleviate the information asymmetry and adverse selection between firms and creditors and ultimately reduces the cost of corporate debt financing.

This paper can inform firms and stakeholders about the impact of opening high-speed railways on debt financing cost: it improves the information environment, reduces the geographical location restrictions of debt financing, ensures the reasonable pricing of corporate debt, and thus promotes the healthy and sound development of the debt market.

This paper provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for the impact of infrastructure construction on the information environment of the debt market in China, which enriches the research on the “high-speed railway economy.” In addition, as an exogenous event, the opening of high-speed railways instantly shortens the time distance between firms and external stakeholders, which gives us a natural environment to conduct empirical research, thus providing a new perspective for financial research on firms' geographical location.

Throughout this research, efficiency levels of the European railway industry are analyzed using non‐parametric methods. A sample of 21 companies is used, in the timeframe of 1984‐1995. The aim of the paper is the analysis of the influence on these firms’ efficiency of organizational change due to their adaptation to the environment in which they operate. This environment has been modified as a consequence of the EU directive 91/440/CEE, which mandates the split of the organizational structure of railway companies in two: operation and infrastructure. Results of this paper state clearly that a major part of the technical efficiency of European railway companies is a consequence of scale inefficiencies. In other words, due to mistakes in the size election. Besides, we have proved that technically efficient companies are those of small size. As a conclusion, we should recommend smaller sizes for the big European railway companies, if they are to improve their technical efficiency.

Wilhelm Launhardt (1832‐1918) is a founder of mathematical economics. His main work, Mathematical Foundations of Economics, published in 1885, was translated into English in 1993. As an engineer, he contributed to the field of not only engineering, but also of economics and, in particular, to those parts in economics which can be treated fruitfully with mathematics. Launhardt developed his work independently from the French engineers, but based it squarely on the work of the agricultural engineer von Thünen. He made references to the economists Sax, Walras and Jevons. His main economic contribution lies in founding location theory but, beyond that, he contributed to the mathematical treatment of economics, labor economics, monetary economics and technology economics with a special emphasis on railway issues from a locational point of view. Hence, it is the purpose of this paper to show how Launhardt used mathematics in his engineering‐based approach to the economics of location and technology.

The aim of this paper is to estimate the (in)efficiency of European railways, through an econometric estimation of frontier functions. The methodology used is the panel data method. The statistical source covers 19 companies observed over the period from 1965 to 1998. Two different specifications are estimated, first a “factor requirements function” and second a more flexible functional form “quadratic function”. Results indicate that the means of the efficiency indicator are around 0.6 and 0.4 for the factor requirement specification and the quadratic specification, respectively, and a great rate of technological progress over the period is also indicated.

The findings suggest that reducing information processing costs as a result of better transportation is an important ingredient in promoting the pricing of firm-specific information. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

The authors adopt a difference-in-difference (DID) research design to examine the impact of information processing costs on stock price synchronicity with a sample of firms listed in the Chinese A-share market during 2007 and 2017.

This paper shows that the launch of the high-speed railway (hereafter HSR) in China is associated with lower stock price synchronicity, consistent with the theory that the HSR reduces investors’ information processing costs (cost of monitoring, acquiring and analyzing firm disclosures). This effect is more pronounced for companies located in remote areas than for those located in large cities. Further tests show that the negative association between the launch of HSR and stock price synchronicity is stronger for companies with higher information asymmetries, proxied by higher equity concentration, higher complexity and lower internal control quality.

This study contributes to the literature in the following three ways. First, prior literature relates the effects of geographic distance to information transmission and information asymmetry between insiders and outside investors (e.g. Coval and Moskowitz, 2001; Kang and Kim, 2008; Malloy, 2005). The authors supplement the literature by providing new empirical evidence from an exogenous shock (natural experiment), that is, the launch of HSR, that facilitates transportation and reduces information transmission costs. Second, prior studies have shown that new airline routes that facilitate transportation improve investment and productivity (e.g. Bernstein et al., 2016; Giroud, 2013). The authors extend this stream of studies by showing that the development of HSR networks reduces information processing costs, and promotes the incorporation of firm-specific information in the asset pricing. More importantly, in this study, the authors explicitly incorporate disclosure processing costs theory into our framework thus enhancing our understanding of how and why improvements in transport relate to better market outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the main market entry barriers confronted by the new operators in liberalized railway freight market (Poland and Sweden), as well as to analyze the inaugurating market of Finland.

Swedish and Polish markets were scrutinized utilizing qualitative case study, implemented through semi‐structured theme interviews. Among primary observations, numerous second‐hand sources were used to gain triangulation. Research was conducted during early 2009. The Finnish material was collected with Delphi technique‐based questionnaires in 2005.

The main findings support previous studies arguing that the main barriers to entry are rolling stock acquisition, needed investments and bureaucracy. In Sweden, companies were start‐ups established on the grounds of the incumbent. The Polish market obtained new operators via vertical integration with a significant competitive presence of a governmental operator. Inaugurating Finnish market is identified as a combination of these two. Therefore, it is easier to understand why new entrants are not operating in the Finnish market.

The research contributes novel, first‐hand data to the subject, which earlier have been studied mostly via second‐hand data and literature analyses.

This paper aims to analyse the viability of production processes in the framework of three industries, referred to here as “automotive”, “machine-tool” and “other transport material”. This idea is of interest as a result of the cognitive convergence that has arisen from the widespread of information and communication technologies in the technical solutions used by most of the product fields that make up the manufacturing industry.

Under the framework of evolutionary theory and based on the cognitive composition of the technical solutions used by the industries studied, this paper has drawn up technology profiles for those industries from the viewpoint of formal logic. These profiles will help us to analyse their potential and difficulties so as to bridge the cognitive gap and enabling them to access new paths and set up processes to diversify their output. Interviews with company management staff and high-ranking experts have provided us with highly useful information to help us complete the theoretical reflection and check it against expected behaviour patterns.

The results confirm that firms in the industries studies find it difficult to drive forward diversification processes. The analysis provides a theoretical explanation for the empirical results that can be found in the literature on the extent to which path dependency processes explain technology dynamics.

The limitations of this study lie on the one hand in the small number of firms interviewed (it would be useful to extend the sample to include other medium- and high-technology industries to see whether the results are confirmed) and on the other hand, in the possibility that the Covid-19 crisis may affect results, investment decisions and access to financial resources, and thus, upset plans for diversification.

There is a consensus that decision-making in general, and in management in particular, is plagued by unpredictability, risk and uncertainty (Baldwin et al., 2005; Bergh et al., 2011). Managers making deliberate strategic choices – which usually require long time horizons and involve high risk (Perello-Marin et al., 2013) – need to know whether the competitive future of their firms lies mainly in product innovation (diversification), in process and organisational innovation, in the internationalisation of production, in mergers or in other, alternative paths (Sydow et al., 2009). This study presents empirical evidence of the possibilities and difficulties faced by firms based on their technology profiles. This is a complex approach that calls for more research effort if it is to become an option for enhancing resilience and flexibility at firms and strengthening their ability to react to changes. According to Raynor (2002) diversification, understood dynamically, provides a way for companies competing in especially turbulent industries to hedge against uncertain future reconfigurations of industry boundaries. Palich et al. (2000) state that compared with single-business firms, firms engaging in related diversification are able to exploit synergies across product units by consolidating business activities in manufacturing, marketing, raw material purchases and R&D, and thus, achieve both scale and scope economies.

The manuscript is absolutely original in terms of its approach and design and sets out to analyse industrial diversification processes on the basis of the cognitive characteristics of the technical solutions used by the various industries.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the application of a decision-making tool for performance evaluation of Indian Railway zones. It basically seeks to analyze the effects of various evaluation criteria on the performance of Indian Railways using a combined multi-criteria decision-making approach which employs decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and “VIse Kriterijumska Optimizacija kompromisno Resenje” (VIKOR) methods.

The performance of 16 Indian Railway zones is first evaluated using DEMATEL method which addresses the inter-relationships between different criteria with the aid of a relationship structure. The VIKOR method which is a compromise ranking approach is then adopted to rank those candidate railway zones. Pareto analysis is also carried out to identify the benchmark railway zones for the under/poor performers so as to improve their operational excellence.

A numerical example from Indian Railways is illustrated and solved for better understanding of the integrated decision-making tool in which the relevant information for the considered railway zones with respect to different evaluation criteria are collected from various websites and Indian Railways annual statistical report. Western and North-Eastern zones, respectively, take the first and the last positions in the derived ranking list. The relevance of selecting different performance indices/evaluation criteria is also discussed.

The application of this integrated methodology would serve as a systematic approach for measurement of the aggregate operational performance of Indian Railway zones so as to gain valuable academic and practical insights. It is also expected to provide an insightful guidance to the railway administrators in taking valuable strategic decisions in promoting the service of Indian Railways.

The integrated DEMATEL-VIKOR method is conceptually simple and easily comprehensible which can consider numerous attributes simultaneously. This paper enables the readers to gain some valuable inputs from a managerial perspective for Indian Railways to formulate strategies for its zones to foster better performance.