Description:

Ron Harris (Tel Aviv University): "Networking Continents: Railway Companies, Expropriation Risk and Investor Protection"

This chapter analyses British investment in railways overseas, in the Empire and beyond it, in the First Era of Globalization. The chapter is based on 4 case studies: India, Argentia, Peru and the United States. I will argue that in railways the overriding concern was expropriation by the host country. This concern shaped the way railway companies were incorporated, their governance and their finance. This is a different concern from the concerns that shaped the organization of other sectors: technological risks, intergenerational transfer challenges, control of territory or monitoring of labor.