Railways regulation in countries of the former USSR: reforms, efficiency estimation and governance choice

Railways restructuring in the countries of the former USSR has practically never been studied before. Meanwhile most of these countries are implementing the same reforms as their western neighbours put in force some years earlier. In this paper, we analyse railway reform trends in these countries and discover a huge diversity of approaches and states of progress. Besides, we make an extended review of literature on railways reforms which covers empirical and institutional papers, theoretical descriptive analyses and, in particular, the reform of Russian railways. Finally, the present study gives the background necessary to learn the situation in the region in question and to understand better the two papers which follow.