A Note on David Hansemann as a Precursor of Chadwick and Demsetz

Abstract

Beat Blankart has always had a strong interest in the history of the German railways. In a very thought provoking paper published in 1987 he deals with the question in how far the history of the Prussian (later German) railways in the 19^th and 20^th century can be explained by political cycles in the sense of the Arrow theorem (Blankart 1987). Prussian railway policy in the 19^th century was characterized by frequent swings between nationalization and privatization. In the period 1820–1847 railways saw a stormy growth with no intervention by the Prussian state at all. From 1849 to 1879 there was a mixed system with private and state owned railways, sometimes in direct competition to each other. In the period from 1884 to 1919 all Prussian railways were nationalized. Finally in 1919/20 all German railways were integrated into one unified state owned system the Deutsche Reichsbahn. Blankart explains these major swings between privatization and nationalization by the Arrow instability.