Railroad Land Grants: Economically Justified?
The American government's land grant policy and provision of subsidies to private railroad companies in the nineteenth century has been the subject of much discussion by historians and economists alike. However, few writers have examined the economic issues involved in the subsidies in detail, leading at times to the wrong conclusions. Lloyd J. Mercer, a Professor of Economics at the University of California (Santa Barbara) is one of the select few who have attempted to carry out an economic analysis of the land-grants policy in order to determine whether the policy was economically justified and socially beneficial. This paper summarizes the professor's article Land Grants to American Railroads: Social Cost or Social Benefit (1969) by identifying the main thoughts of the author followed by a critical analysis of what he has suggested in the article.
Summary
Professor Mercer disagrees with the commonly held view of most historians that the land-grant policy was overly generous and the private individuals and companies who received the grants and subsidies made huge profits by selling the land, manipulating securities and exploiting the farmers. He is more in agreement with those who have argued that the land grants and subsidies were not very profitable but did provide sufficient attraction for the pioneers to venture into the railroad-building project.
The author then uses the internal rate of return (IRR)
method to calculate the real...
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