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AbstractTransaction costs have been an issue since the advent of the deregulation of the European railway markets in the 1990s. Transaction cost economics received renewed attention in research on the deregulated railway markets in the EU after the publications of two influential reports in the early 2010s.In this article, we develop a model that enables classification and measurement of transaction costs and other coordination costs in deregulated markets. This model is then used to analyze the costs of path allocation in the Swedish railway sector and to compare the results with findings in previous research. We also discuss the economic rationale of the distribution of coordination costs among the involved parties.Our key empirical findings are that the total coordination costs in the Swedish market‐mimicking path allocation process are as low as or lower than the most cost‐efficient market coordination processes studied in railway markets, and that the state administrations take on nearly all the coordination costs in order to minimize the effects of opportunism, rent‐seeking and information impactedness. Another finding is that the size of the coordination costs found by different studies seems to be dependent on whether a bottom‐up or a top‐down approach is used.

An introduction of a kilometer tax for heavy goods vehicles can be constrained by the risk of that higher production costs than competitors in other countries will negatively affect regions and industries of policy concern. We estimate factor demand elasticities in the Swedish manufacturing industry using firm level data for the 1990-2001 period on input prices and quantities. The results show that the introduction of a kilometer tax for heavy goods vehicles decreases transport demand and increases labor demand. The effects are less pronounced in terms of changes in output, though some industries (e.g. wood, and pulp- and paper) can be expected to be affected more than others due to their dependence on road freight transport. The regional dimension regarding the consequences of a kilometer tax seems to be small or even non-existing. [author's abstract]