IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/topchp/978-3-030-34532-7_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Ex Ante and Ex Post Access Regime in the Postal Sector: A Revival of Margin Squeeze?

In: The Changing Postal Environment

Author

Listed:
  • Pier Luigi Parcu

    (European University Institute)

  • Anna Renata Pisarkiewicz

    (European University Institute)

Abstract

Third-party access is one of the key tools used by regulators to stimulate competition in network industries. However, in the postal sector, incumbent operators could refuse to provide access to their networks on competitive terms. As the experience from the electronic communications sectors shows, constructive refusals to deal, caused by unreasonable or onerous terms, are far more frequent than outright refusals. These could be implemented through a margin squeeze, where a dominant firm offers wholesale access at a price greater than the difference between its retail price and its wholesale cost. Such combination of retail and wholesale prices allows the dominant firm to leverage its upstream position and to make downstream competitors unprofitable. Only a vertically integrated company can engage in a price squeeze as it needs to be able to influence prices, or better the margin between the prices, in two related markets. Without a simultaneous presence in two vertically integrated markets, a company can still engage in predatory or excessive pricing, discrimination, or refusal to deal, but only in one market.

Suggested Citation

  • Pier Luigi Parcu & Anna Renata Pisarkiewicz, 2020. "Ex Ante and Ex Post Access Regime in the Postal Sector: A Revival of Margin Squeeze?," Topics in Regulatory Economics and Policy, in: Pier Luigi Parcu & Timothy J. Brennan & Victor Glass (ed.), The Changing Postal Environment, pages 241-253, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:topchp:978-3-030-34532-7_18
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-34532-7_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    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:spr:topchp:978-3-030-34532-7_18. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.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.