Corrigendum: Were British railway companies well managed in the early twentieth century?
In November 2008 we published an article entitled ‘Were British railway companies 
well managed in the early twentieth century?’. In that article we assessed 
14 different railway companies against four criteria. Our investigation of the rate of 
return on capital employed, cost inefficiency levels, improvements in total factor 
productivity (TFP), and improvements in the speed of passenger trains revealed 
substantial and sustained levels of heterogeneity in company performance. On that 
basis, we argued that ‘Without the discipline of either strong competition or 
effective regulation, managerial failure was common. This sector is an important 
qualification to the conventional wisdom that late Victorian Britain did not fail’.