The Changing Postal Environment

This book addresses major issues facing postal and delivery services throughout the world. Worldwide, there is currently a considerable amount of interest in postal and delivery economics. The industry is reacting to a state of near crisis and is implementing different drastic changes. The European Commission and member States are still wrestling with the problem of how to implement entry liberalization into postal markets, how to address digital competition, and how to maintain the Universal Service Obligation (USO). The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 in the U.S. has perhaps created and exacerbated the problems faced by USPS.

Digitalization, technological development and online platforms are strongly affecting both the way postal and delivery operators are managing their services, as well as their role on the market. Strong emphasis was attributed to the assets of Postal Operators (POs) and their added value in the digital age as well as onnew business strategies.

This volume presents original essays by prominent researchers in the field, selected and edited from papers presented at the 27th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics held in Dublin, Ireland, 22-25 May, 2019. Topics addressed by this volume include the fragmentation of the postal supply chain, blockchain and digital postal services, and the fading of traditional postal market boundaries. This book will be a useful tool not only for graduate students and professors, but also for postal administrations, consulting firms, and federal government departments.

Auteur

Pier Luigi Parcu is part-time Professor at the European University Institute (Italy) and Area Director of the Florence School of Regulation Communications & Media. He is Director of the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom and Director of the Florence Competition Program in Law and Economics. His research in the area of industrial organization and law and economics focuses on the interaction between regulation and antitrust in shaping firms' behavior.

Timothy J. Brennan is professor of public policy and economics at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (US). He has published over 135 articles and book chapters, principally on antitrust and regulatory economics, including the electricity, telecommunications, postal, oil pipeline, and other infrastructure sectors. He also has a strong interest in the nexus between economics and philosophy, which he has applied to questions such as the ethics of discount rates and the role of consumer error in designing energy policy.

Victor Glass is a professor of professional practice in the finance and economics department at Rutgers Business School (New Jersey, US). He is the director of the Center for Research in Regulated Industries. For almost thirty years, he was responsible for forecasting demand and setting access rates for more than 1100 telephone companies and was heavily involved in regulatory reform. He has published studies of market and regulatory issues that have appeared in academic journals and trade magazines.

Contenu
Chapter 1. Postal and Electronic Communications services: together again?.- Chapter 2. Potential Insights for U.S. USO from recent Federal Communication Commission's Broadband Auctions.- Chapter 3. Postal Services. Quo Vadis?.- Chapter 4. How the fragmentation of the postal supply chain leads to new business models.- Chapter 5. The fading of the traditional postal market boundaries.- Chapter 6. European postal operators' diversification strategies and implications for cost allocation.- Chapter 7. Pricing "competitive" Postal Products.- Chapter 8. Assessing the Recommendations of the President's Task Force on the Postal Service.- Chapter 9. On Correcting the Cross-Subsidies Caused by the U.S. Postal Tariff.- Chapter 10. Funding the USO: Cross-subsidization and Net cost balancing.- Chapter 11. The Compensation Fund on the Postal Market. The Polish case.- Chapter 12. Blockchain and postal digital services: opportunities and drawbacks.- Chapter 13. Potential issues and challenges in e-commerce and their implications for the postal services sector: an economic perspective.- Chapter 14. 'Gravity' and The Packaging of B2C Cross-Border Ecommerce.- Chapter 15. Postal traffic in Portugal: applying time series modeling.- Chapter 16. Demand elasticities at the intensive and extensive margins for advertising mail traffic in the UK.- Chapter 17. Platform competition: market structure and pricing.- Chapter 18. Ex ante and ex post access regime in the postal sector: a revival of margin squeeze?.- Chapter 19. Competition Law in the Postal Sector: trends and analyses of competition cases in Europe.- Chapter 20. Approaches to Assessing Vertical Mergers: A Review and Evaluation.- Chapter 21. (Un)Locking Parcel Lockers.- Chapter 22. Can the postal market afford affordability and how to assess it.- Chapter 23. A note on postal users' needs and their role in postal regulation.- Chapter 24. The economic and social utility of the postal infrastructure: Above and beyond postal items delivery.- Chapter 25. Beyond the USO: reflections on recent decisions on postal SGEIs.- Chapter 26. How the USO Might Help Influence and Enhance the Growth of Smarter Cities.