Abstract

This study explores the financial performance and economic impact of British investment in the Colombian National Railway Company, the largest British direct investment in Colombia during the first period of globalisation. It aims to ascertain the railway’s impact on the regional economy and explain why it failed as a going concern. It explores three dimensions: the use of guaranteed railway bonds, the financial performance of the company, and the economic impact within different sectors of the local economy. The article implements existing methods such as financial analysis, internal rate of return, social savings, counterfactual analysis, and tailors these to a case study methodology for a micro business history of a single company. The article provides three main conclusions. Railway bond guarantees were critical to completion of the railway but detrimental to its long-term financial viability. The company was operationally profitable but stymied by construction delays. The railway contributed to growth of the export sector, internal agricultural trade, and government revenues. Contributions include tailoring the social savings method to a local rather than national focus, re-evaluation of the role of railways in Colombian economic growth, and exploring the influence of railways on internal trade within Latin American economies.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2020.1844665.This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

摘要

本研究探讨了英国对哥伦比亚国家铁路公司的投资的财务绩效和经济影响，这是全球化第一时期英国对哥伦比亚最大的直接投资。它的目的是确定铁路对地区经济的影响，并解释其持续经营失败的原因。它探讨了三个维度：担保铁路债券的使用、公司的财务业绩以及对当地经济不同部门的经济影响。本文采用了财务分析、内部收益率、社会储蓄、反事实分析等现有方法，并将这些方法定制为针对单个公司的微观业务历史的案例研究方法。文章提供了三个主要结论。铁路债券担保对于铁路的竣工至关重要，但不利于其长期财务生存能力。该公司实现了运营盈利，但因施工延误而受阻。铁路促进了出口部门、国内农产品贸易和政府收入的增长。贡献包括根据地方而不是国家的重点调整社会储蓄方法，重新评估铁路在哥伦比亚经济增长中的作用，以及探索铁路对拉丁美洲经济体内部贸易的影响。

本文的补充数据可在线获取：https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2020.1844665。本文已更正，并进行了细微更改。这些更改不会影响文章的学术内容。