ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the thinking about railway regulation, not only by Friedrich List but by others too, had developed already to a surprising degree of sophistication at a time when the building of railroads in Germany had barely begun. It discusses List’s ideas on railway regulation, mostly as laid down in his work The German National Transport System of 1838 and his The German Railway System as an Instrument for the Perfection of German Industry, the German Customs Union and German Unity in General of 1841. The chapter provides a short sketch of Hansemann’s life, which in many ways was the precise opposite of List’s tragic career. It contains an exposition of Hansemann’s regulatory proposals, drawn from his The Railways and their Shareholders in Relation to the State and reflects shortly in how far Hansemann can be thought of as a precursor of Demsetz and Chadwick.
