Michael A. Crew - Böcker

The European Commission and its member states, along with many others, are wrestling with the problem of how to implement the scheduled liberalization of the postal sector while maintaining the universal service obligation. This book addresses some of these concerns. It is comprised of original essays chosen from among several dozen presented at the 13th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics, which was held in Antwerp, Belgium, in June, 2005.

This work brings together leading practitioners, world-wide postal administrations, and the courier industry, as well as a number of regulators, academic economists, mailers, and lawyers, to examine some of the major policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industry. Issues addressed include international postal policy; the universal service obligation; regulation; competition, entry, and the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of cost analysis in postal service; productivity; interaction of law and economics; and future technologies and service standards.

This volume directly compares the practices of adversarial and inquisitorial systems of law from a psychological perspective. It aims at understanding why American and European continental systems differ so much, while both systems entertain much support in their communities. In the chapters it is demonstrated how the different systems chose different solutions for many of the same problems and how the solutions are related to the typical characteristics of the adversarial and the inquisitorial systems of criminal law. Particular emphasis is placed on problems addressed by psychological researchers and practitioners in the two systems. Chapters cover topics including: police investigative techniques, risk assessment, the death penalty, recovered memories, child witnesses, line-up practices, expert witnesses, trial procedures, and lay versus judge decision making.

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.

Current Directions in Postal Reform brings together leading practitioners, worldwide postal administrations, and the courier industry as well as a number of regulators, academic economists, mailers and lawyers, to examine some of the major policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industry. Issues addressed include international postal policy; the universal service obligation; regulation; competition, entry, and the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of cost analysis in the postal service; productivity; interaction of law and economics; and service standards.

This work reviews the changing regulatory environment, notably incentive regulation and competition in regulated industries. Some of the major changes in electricity, gas, and telephone utilities allow for competition in local service through unbundling. This work should be of interest to researchers, utility managers, regulatory commissions, and the Federal Government.

Regulation Under Increasing Competition brings together practitioners, regulators, and economists to examine the important policy and regulatory issues facing the telecommunications and electricity industries. This volume reviews such topics as competitive entry, stranded costs, pricing and market mechanisms. It provides a unique perspective on problems in a newly deregulated environment.

Brings together practitioners, postal administrators, the courier industry, regulators, academic economists and lawyers to examine important policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industries. This volume reviews such topics as cost and productivity analysis, universal service and entry, demand analysis and the structure of postal payment system, price regulation and competition.

companies to diversify may outweigh the costs of doing so, and that some traditional regulatory concerns may be excessively restrictive. The papers by Hillman, Harris, and Jang and Norsworthy, while all relating to individual industries, have lessons for other regulated industries. Hillman's paper, "Oil Pipeline Rates: A Case for Yardstick Regulation," deals with the important topic of yardstick regulation for oil pipelines. While his application is highly specific, the potential application of yardstick regulation goes beyond oil pipelines. He reviews the evolution in the law regulating oil pipelines. While showing that some progress has been made in introducing economic efficiency considerations into regulation, he provides a careful critique of the operation of existing regulation and suggests an alternative based upon a yardstick approach. His approach seeks to use competitive market prices as the yardstick, with administration of price discrimination limited to dealing with possible "favoritism" to subsidiaries and affiliates. "Telecommunications Services as a Strategic Industry: Implications for United States Public Policy" by Harris and "Productivity Growth and Technical Change in the United States Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturing Industries" by Jang and Norsworthy provide important insights for telecommunications.

Any Chainnan of the British Post Office dwells in the shadow of Rowland Hill, and, if he were an honest man, he probably from time to time, while singing the praises of Rowland Hill, as is his due, thinks a silent thought of sympathy for his predecessor Colonel Maberly, the head of the Post Office, the Champion of established orthodoxy, the leader of the Professionals, who had to endure the irresistible force of Hill's arguments combined with his skills as a pamphleteer, agitator, and political propagandist. My favorite passage of the book Royal Mail by Martin Daunton (1985) shows how much the Post Office of the day needed a Rowland Hill to challenge Colonel Maberly and all that he stood for. I quote from a passage describing how the Colonel, when he arrived at about 11:00 a.m. and while enjoying his breakfast, listened to his private secretary reading the morning's correspondence. Daunton records: The Colonel, still half engaged with his private correspondence, would hear enough to make him keep up a rumring commentary of disparaging grunts, "Pooh! stuff! upon my soul!" etc.

Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments effectively transfers an environmental property right, the difference in unrestricted emissions and the yearly endowment, 3 from certain fIrms to the public domain. Phase I is to reduce annual SOz emissions of 261 large (100 MW or more) utility generating units with emissions greater than 2. 5 IbslmmBtu. The yearly endowment during Phase I is equal to 2. 51bslmmBtu times the 1985-1987 baseline energy usage. Phase I standards are required to be met by 1995, an exception being units that install certain control technologies. In this case, units may postpone compliance until 1997 and may receive bonus 4 allowances. Phase II begins in the year 2000 and applies to any utility units (25 MW or more) with emissions above 1. 2 Ibs/mmBtu. The endowment is 1. 2 Ibs/mmBtu times baseline fuel use (U. S. Environmental Protection Agency 1990). 5 Hahn and Noll (1982), Bohi and Burtraw (1992), Lock and Harkawik (1991), and Walther (1991) discuss interactions between traditional rate-of-return regula- tion and overlaying environmental regulations, particularly tradable emission allowances, in the electric utility industry.Lock and Harkawik (1991) and Niemeyer (1991) discuss utility planning in this regard. Bohi and Burtraw (1992) fmd that a utility's environmental investment incentives will vary depending on cost recovery rules and argue that symmetry in treatment of investments in allowances and control technology is necessary if the utility is to be provided with the incentive to minimize costs of compliance.

Postal service has received considerably less attention in the economics literature than traditional public utilities. Postal service is facing some very important challenges arising out of the increasingly high-tech nature of postal service, the entry of competition into the business, and new attitudes on the part of government to postal service. In the United Kingdom and Germany the increased interest in privatization and recognition of the benefits of competition are likely to have an impact on postal service. These challenges mean that postal managers must learn new ways of doing business, not just in successfully introducing new hardware and in new internal operating procedures, but also in the development of new pricing and costing methodologies and in the introduction of new management information systems. In order to deal with these new developments managers need a solid foundation in applied microeconomic theory as it relates to postal service. This book encompasses the theoretical foundation for postal policy, particularly with regard to pricing, service quality, and competitive issues.

This book is based on a conference on `Regulation and the Evolving Nature of Postal and Delivery Services: 1992 and Beyond' held at Village PTT, La Londe les Maures, France, on March 18, 1992. Leading practitioners, worldwide postal administrations, and the express delivery industry, as well as a number of regulators, academic economists, and lawyers examine the important policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industries. This includes such issues as: international postal policy and the role of the Universal Postal Union; regulation and terminal dues; competition, entry and the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of costs analysis in postal service; productivity; and service standards.

This book is based on two seminars held at Rutgers on October 22, 1993, and May 6, 1994, entitled "Incentive Regulation for Public Utilities". These contributions by leading scholars and practitioners represent new research in public utility economics and include topics such as the theory of incentive regulation, dynamic pricing, transfer pricing, issues in law and economics, pricing priority service, and energy utility resource planning.

This text brings together leading practitioners, world-wide postal administrations and the express industry, as well as a number of regulators, academic economists and lawyers to examine some of the important policy and regulatory issues facing the industry. Issues addressed include: international postal policy, including the role of the Universal Postal Union; regulation and terminal dues; competition, entry and the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of cost analysis in postal service; productivity; and service standards. This volume follows two earlier volumes by the same editors, "Competition and Innovation in Postal Services" (1991); and "Regulation and the Nature of Postal and Delivery Services (1992)".

This volume focuses on incentive regulation and competition. While much of the regulatory action is taking place in telecommunications, the impact of competition and the resultant regulatory change is being felt in other traditional public utilities including electricity. The book reviews topics including price caps, incentive regulation, market structure and new regulatory technologies.

This study brings together practitioners, postal administrators, the express industry, regulators, economists and lawyers to examine the important policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industries. It reviews such topics as international postal policy, the universal service obligation, regulation and competition, entry and the role of scale and scope economics, cost analysis in postal services, and service standards.

This compilation of original papers selected from the 19th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics and authored by an international cast of economists, lawyers, regulators and industry practitioners addresses perhaps the most significant problem that has ever faced the postal sector - electronic competition from information and communication technologies (ICT). This has increased significantly over the last few years with a consequent serious drop in mail volume. All postal services have been hard hit by ICT, but probably the hardest hit is the United States Postal Service, which has lost almost a quarter of its mail volume since 2007. The loss of mail volume has a devastating effect on scale economies, which now work against post offices, forcing up their unit costs. Strategies to stem the loss in volume include non-linear pricing or volume discounts, increased efficiency and the development of new products. This loss of mail volume from ICT is one of a number of current problems addressed in this volume. The Universal Service Obligation (USO) continues to be a leading issue and concern that ICT undermines postal services ability to finance the USO is discussed. The importance of measuring and forecasting demand and costs take on even greater importance as ICT undermines the foundations of the postal business. This thought provoking book brings to bear new analyses of the most serious threat post offices have ever faced and raises fundamental questions as to the future of mail. Multi-Modal Competition and the Future of Mail is an ideal resource for students, researchers in regulation and competition law, postal administrations, policy makers, consulting firms and regulatory bodies.

This text aims to be a source of useful information and analysis on the state of the postal and delivery sector. It offers up-to-date insights into strategy and regulation as well as the economics of this sector. 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 and demand analysis in postal service, productivity, interaction of law and economics, human resources, transition and reform issues.

Deregulation has introduced competition into traditionally monopolistic markets, particularly telecommunications and electric utilities. This book brings together ten essays that were presented at the Center for Research in Regulated Industries at Rutgers University and funded by several regulated companies. The authors, who include young scholars as well as established and highly regarded consultants and researchers, address some of the major issues now facing network industries and regulators - deregulation, competition, stranded assets, diversification, pricing, and mergers and acquisitions.

Competitive Transformation of the Postal and Delivery Sector is an indispensable source of information and analysis on the current state of the postal and delivery sector. It offers current insights of leading researchers and practitioners into strategy and regulation as well as the economics of this sector. Issues addressed include national and international perspectives, financial viability, the universal service obligation, regulation, competition, entry, the role of scale and scope economies, the nature and role of cost and demand analysis in postal service, productivity, interaction of law and economics, human resources, transition and reform issues. The papers in the book were selected from the papers presented at the 11th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics, Toledo, Spain, June 4-7, 2003.

Worldwide, there is considerable interest in postal and delivery economics. Governments, particularly in the European Union, are examining closely the roles of the two systems and how best to regulate them. This volume brings together 20 essays originally presented at the 12th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics held in Cork, Ireland in June 2004. Contributors include researchers, practitioners, and senior managers from throughout the world.

The European Commission and its member states, along with many others, are wrestling with the problem of how to implement the scheduled liberalization of the postal sector while maintaining the universal service obligation. This book addresses some of these concerns. It is comprised of original essays chosen from among several dozen presented at the 13th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics, which was held in Antwerp, Belgium, in June, 2005.

Expanding Competition in Regulated Industries reviews the changing regulatory environment, notably incentive regulation and competition in regulated industries. Some of the major changes in electricity, gas, and telephone utilities allow for competition in local service through unbundling. This book is of interest to researchers, utility managers, regulatory commissions, and the Federal Government.

Emerging Competition in Postal and Delivery Services brings together practitioners, postal administrators, the courier industry, regulators, academic economists and lawyers to examine important policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industries. This volume reviews such topics as cost and productivity analysis, universal service and entry, demand analysis and the structure of postal payment system, price regulation and competition.

Any Chainnan of the British Post Office dwells in the shadow of Rowland Hill, and, if he were an honest man, he probably from time to time, while singing the praises of Rowland Hill, as is his due, thinks a silent thought of sympathy for his predecessor Colonel Maberly, the head of the Post Office, the Champion of established orthodoxy, the leader of the Professionals, who had to endure the irresistible force of Hill's arguments combined with his skills as a pamphleteer, agitator, and political propagandist. My favorite passage of the book Royal Mail by Martin Daunton (1985) shows how much the Post Office of the day needed a Rowland Hill to challenge Colonel Maberly and all that he stood for. I quote from a passage describing how the Colonel, when he arrived at about 11:00 a.m. and while enjoying his breakfast, listened to his private secretary reading the morning's correspondence. Daunton records: The Colonel, still half engaged with his private correspondence, would hear enough to make him keep up a rumring commentary of disparaging grunts, "Pooh! stuff! upon my soul!" etc.

Deregulation has introduced competition into traditionally monopolistic markets, particularly telecommunications and electric utilities. This book brings together ten essays that were presented at the Center for Research in Regulated Industries at Rutgers University and funded by several regulated companies. The authors, who include young scholars as well as established and highly regarded consultants and researchers, address some of the major issues now facing network industries and regulators - deregulation, competition, stranded assets, diversification, pricing, and mergers and acquisitions.

Competitive Transformation of the Postal and Delivery Sector is an indispensable source of information and analysis on the current state of the postal and delivery sector. It offers current insights of leading researchers and practitioners into strategy and regulation as well as the economics of this sector. Issues addressed include national and international perspectives, financial viability, the universal service obligation, regulation, competition, entry, the role of scale and scope economies, the nature and role of cost and demand analysis in postal service, productivity, interaction of law and economics, human resources, transition and reform issues. The papers in the book were selected from the papers presented at the 11th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics, Toledo, Spain, June 4-7, 2003.