IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/rneart/v7y2008i2n1.html

Access Pricing, Bypass and Universal Service in Post

Author

Listed:
  • Armstrong Mark

    (University College London)

Abstract

A postal regulator typically faces two issues which make the design of efficient access pricing especially difficult and which complicate the process of liberalizing the industry. First, universal service obligations, together with the presence of fixed costs, require retail prices to depart from the underlying marginal costs of the incumbent provider. Second, competing firms may be able to bypass the incumbent's delivery network. Within a simple and stylized framework, this note analyzes how access charges should best be set in the light of these twin constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Armstrong Mark, 2008. "Access Pricing, Bypass and Universal Service in Post," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-16, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:rneart:v:7:y:2008:i:2:n:1
    DOI: 10.2202/1446-9022.1144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1446-9022.1144
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1446-9022.1144?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. De Donder Philippe & Cremer Helmuth & Dudley Paul & Rodriguez Frank, 2011. "Welfare and Pricing of Mail in a Communications Market," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(3), pages 1-24, September.
    2. De Donder Phillippe & Cremer Helmuth & Dudley Paul & Rodriguez Frank, 2008. "Price Controls in the Postal Sector: A Welfare Analysis of Alternative Control Structures," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-25, June.
    3. Xie, Li & Kong, Chun, 2024. "Electricity user connection pricing strategy: The incomplete contract theory perspective," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    4. Michael A. Crew & Paul R. Kleindorfer, 2010. "Access and the USO Under Full Market Opening," Chapters, in: Michael A. Crew & Paul R. Kleindorfer (ed.), Heightening Competition in the Postal and Delivery Sector, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Valentiny, Pál & Kiss, Károly Miklós, 2009. "A nélkülözhetetlen eszközök értelmezése és a postai szolgáltatások [The interpretation of essential facilities and the postal services]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(11), pages 1001-1024.
    6. Markus Lang & Marc Laperrouza & Matthias Finger, 2013. "Competition Effects in a Liberalized Railway Market," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 375-398, September.
    7. Axel Gautier & Xavier Wauthy, 2010. "Price competition under universal service obligations," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 6(3), pages 311-326, September.
    8. Jaag Christian, 2013. "Price Regulation and the Financing of Universal Services in Network Industries," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 125-150, September.
    9. Xie, Li & Kong, Chun, 2023. "The social welfare effect of electricity user connection price policy reform," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 346(C).
    10. Carlos Pateiro-Rodríguez & Federico Martín-Bermúdez & Carlos Pateiro-López & Manuel Escourido-Calvo, 2024. "Universal Service Regulation and Network Effects in Services of General Economic Interest in the European Union," Economies, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-19, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L87 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Postal and Delivery Services
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:rneart:v:7:y:2008:i:2:n:1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.