This text aims to offer insight to problems in postal and delivery economics. Issues addressed include: international postal policy; the universal service obligation; regulation; competition; entry; the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of cost analysis in postal service; productivity; interaction of law and economics; future technologies; and service standards.
Liberalization and the Universal Service Obligation.- 1. Putty-Putty, Putty-Clay or Humpty-Dumpty?.- 2. Funding the Universal Service Obligation under Liberalisation.- 3. Assessing Liberalization in Context.- 4. Sustainability of USO in a Liberalized Postal Market.- 5. A Comparison of the Burden of Universal Service in Italy and the United States.- 6. The Welfare Economics of Universal Service Standards and Service Quality.- 7. Two-Tier Pricing under Liberalization.- Cost and Demand Studies.- 8. Postal Services Cost Modeling.- 9. An Econometric Study of Cost Elasticity in the Activities of Post Office Counters.- 10. Mail Demand in the Long and Short Term.- 11. Productivity and the Substitution between Labor and Capital in Postal Organizations.- 12. Disaggregated Letter Traffic Demand in the UK.- Strategic Issues.- 13. People and Privatization.- 14. Modern Postal Reform Laws.- 15. Evaluation of a Public Post Office: A Canadian Experience.- 16. Saturday Delivery: Who Provides It? Who Needs It?.- 17. Postal Administrations and Non-Postal Products.- 18. USPS Finances: Is there a financially viable future.- 19. Postal Infrastructures and Economic Development.- 20. Assessment and Responses of Postal Sector Operators to Electronic Diversions.