Power generation and transmission are complementary activities that must be coordinated to ensure an optimal use and development of the transmission network. This coordination is today more difficult in a liberalized system, because of unbundling and the freedom for investors to choose their...

The article analyses the impact of the Lisbon Treaty, entered into force in December 2009, on the provision of postal services and especially on universal services obligations. Through the amendment of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the...

This paper discusses the net cost of universal service obligations and the potential burden they represent on the universal service provider. Specifically, it analyzes the situation in the postal sector after full liberalization. It considers various interpretations of what an unfair burden...

This paper studies the relationship between USO and environmental concern in the postal sector. We concentrate on the obligation to deliver mail on a D+1 basis. We examine how the USO should be designed to properly account for the environmental cost in a variety of situations ranging from a...

This paper investigates the hypothesis that if the incumbent were given the freedom to adjust its prices for contestable mail, an entrant would be able to capture only a very limited amount of mail and the monopoly would be shown to have little value. It examines the effect of flexible pricing...

This paper analyzes the pricing incentives facing the U.S. Postal Service due to the change from the Cost of Service Regulation practiced under the Postal Reform Act (PRA) to the Price Cap Regulation required by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA).

We build a model where a postal incumbent offering single piece, transactional and advertising mail competes with postal entrants and with a firm offering an alternative medium. We solve for the optimal prices under various competition assumptions. We calibrate the model and provide numerical...

In the postal sector, the financial burden of the universal service depends on its content, the postal market characteristics and the countrys geographical configuration. These three groups of factors affect both the direct cost of providing the service and the extent of competition on the...

In this paper, we examine the application of SFA method with time-invariant inefficiency and assess its estimation of inefficiency when applied to cross section and panel data. By using simulation methods, we look at the effect of unobserved heterogeneity on the estimates of inefficiency in both...