ASSESSING COMPETITION IN THE EUROPEAN RAIL FREIGHT MARKET : IS THERE AN OLIGOPOLY ?

This paper provides an analysis of the competition for the European rail freight market at the firm level : who are the main players on the European market and what is the current state of the competition ? The focus is on a static approach through indicators of concentration from the industrial economy like Herfindahl - Hirschman Index (HHI), the four-firm concentration ratio (CR4) and other. Main results show a high number of active operators on the West European market but a moderate level of concentration (loose oligopoly) with a risk of dominant position by the German incumbent (DB Schenker). They highlight a multiscale problem in terms of regulation with a moderate concentration on the European market, but the persistence of a strong market power from incumbents on their respective national markets. The study provides a new approach of the competition in the rail freight industry dealing with disaggregated data (firm level), a novel database (including newcomers and incumbents), an extended market scope (European level) and indicators usually used in the industrial economy but never for the rail freight industry because of the lack of data.