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This paper stresses the importance of the treatment of heterogeneity between delivery offices when estimating economies of scale in outdoor mail delivery activity. We show that models estimated with cross-section data can give biased results and that panel data models encompass cross- section models. In practice this means that empirical estimates of economies of scale in delivery will be underestimated when using cross-section data and researchers should, where possible, adopt panel estimation techniques. In line with these findings we have estimated cost functions for UK outdoor mail activities using panel data that take into account observed heterogeneity by using variables describing the environmental characteristics of delivery offices. Among these variables, the proportion of traffic delivered by non rural routes is introduced in a non linear way (with a stratification of the sample) into the cost models and we find strong evidence of UK outdoor mail delivery activities exhibiting returns to scale with respect to volumes per delivery point that lie in the range of less than 2 to over 4 according to the value of this proportion. These results are consistent with other studies on outdoor delivery costs in France and the USA and add to the growing international literature that substantial fixed costs are incurred in outdoor mail delivery activities.

Reparameterising the estimated model allows further insights into the key factors underpinning the existence of economies of scale in UK outdoor mail delivery activities. Namely, that economies of scale are primarily due to the concentration of traffic per delivery point and that the extent to which Royal Mail benefits from economies of scale depends on the relative growth rate of mail volumes versus the number of delivery points. In general the estimated cost model suggests that the greater the rate of traffic growth relative to the number of delivery points the greater the degree to which Royal Mail benefits from economies of scale and vice versa. These are powerful conclusions to draw from the estimated cost function and suggest that postal policies on the future of the postal markt.

Based on the results given above, we make the following conclusions concerning the potential for obtaining venture capital for an entrant delivery service.

More scenarios can be examined with the models presented here. In addition, the models can be enchanced with new input variables for future research.

In this paper we asked ourselves a number of questions: who will benefit from the liberalization of the European postal market, what will the end game of the European postal market look like and how can smaller states secure an equitable share of the benefits given the current fact of asymmetrical liberalization and differences in sizes of home markets. We may assume, on the basis of the historical process of liberalization of markets, that in the long run the full liberalization of the European markets will positively contribute to the welfare of all member states. With economies of scale being so important for postal services, and its related markets of express and logistics, the companies with large home markets such as Deutsche Post and La Poste are in the advantage conform the Stolper-Samuelson theorem. We therefore believe that the future stable competitive configuration will more likely be one in which 2 or 3 powerful players lead the market, with perhaps some smaller players serving purely local markets (and which will be contained by the larger powers in their possibility to expand). The current practice of asymmetrical liberalization supports this development, as it limits the growth of postal operators from smaller companies, thereby deteriorating their future competitive position in a liberalized and integrated European postal market. To create a fair playing ground between larger and smaller countries, the European Commission should implement a -temporary- reciprocity rule, allowing national governments to block foreign companies operating from a non-liberalized home market, to enter (segments of) their national postal market, be it through an owned start-up or through mergers and acquisitions. However, in the end there needs to be a fully liberalized European postal market. The proposed reciprocity rule is a fair measure since companies from small countries are at a disadvantage, even in case of reciprocity, because of their small home markets. The rule should be used to allow the smaller member states to speed up the innovation in their economies in order to absorb the free-falling production factors in case their national postal and logistics clusters cannot compete in an integrated European market. Also, the European Commission needs to view the future development of the postal services no longer as a stand-alone business, but as an integral part of the business of logistic services, since the dynamics of that industry define the dynamics of the postal services.

A process that permits labour and management to test new work methods and new work rules can facilitate the introduction of changes and assist parties in resolving longstanding disputes.

The process must be truly jointly controlled with both parties having equal rights and input into all decisions. The process designed by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Canada Post Corporation was successful due to a number of factors:

The success of the Appendix AA process was due to the acknowledgement of both union and management that there is a need to improve working conditions with respect to health and safety while enhancing the quality of services and addressing the realities of increased competition and the threats posed by deregulation and privatization. This progress is a significant especially given the poor labor relations that existed for many years. Continuation of this approach promises further progress.

In this paper, we study the problem of maintaining metadata for open Web content. In digital libraries such as DLESE, NSDL and G-Portal, metadata records are created for some good quality Web content objects so as to make them more accessible. These Web objects are dynamic making it necessary to update their metadata records. As Web metadata maintenance involves manual efforts, we propose to reduce the efforts by introducing the () model to monitor only those changes made on Web page content regions that concern metadata attributes while ignoring other changes. We also develop evaluation metrics to measure the number of alerts and the amount of efforts in updating Web metadata records. KeC model has been experimented on metadata records defined for Wikipedia articles, and its performance with different settings is reported. The model is implemented in G-Portal as a metadata maintenance module.

This paper has reviewed the conditions necessary for services to be removed from price controls for the postal sector, consistent with the present regulatory environment in the UK. In particular, it has developed the approach used by UK regulators outside of the postal sector into one that places more emphasis on testing whether a market is likely to be prospectively competitive within the price-control period. First, the assumptions used by the USP in its forecasts for the price-control period can be assessed to see if they are consistent with there being no significant market power for any service within that period (Test A). In particular, the paper illustrates with an example of magazine mail how the critical demand elasticity values could be derived from the USP business plan for comparison with actual values in assessing whether Test A is satisfied. Second, the observations of the market can be used to confirm whether the USP’s forecasts contained in the business plan are indeed reasonable and compatible with the developments of the market (Test B). The removal of services then requires costs to be allocated between competitive and non-competitive markets to enable the coverage of the main control to shrink over time as the competitive market develops.

In this paper, we study the problem of maintaining metadata for open Web content. In digital libraries such as DLESE, NSDL and G-Portal, metadata records are created for some good quality Web content objects so as to make them more accessible. These Web objects are dynamic making it necessary to update their metadata records. As Web metadata maintenance involves manual efforts, we propose to reduce the efforts by introducing the () model to monitor only those changes made on Web page content regions that concern metadata attributes while ignoring other changes. We also develop evaluation metrics to measure the number of alerts and the amount of efforts in updating Web metadata records. KeC model has been experimented on metadata records defined for Wikipedia articles, and its performance with different settings is reported. The model is implemented in G-Portal as a metadata maintenance module.

In this paper we asked ourselves a number of questions: who will benefit from the liberalization of the European postal market, what will the end game of the European postal market look like and how can smaller states secure an equitable share of the benefits given the current fact of asymmetrical liberalization and differences in sizes of home markets. We may assume, on the basis of the historical process of liberalization of markets, that in the long run the full liberalization of the European markets will positively contribute to the welfare of all member states. With economies of scale being so important for postal services, and its related markets of express and logistics, the companies with large home markets such as Deutsche Post and La Poste are in the advantage conform the Stolper-Samuelson theorem. We therefore believe that the future stable competitive configuration will more likely be one in which 2 or 3 powerful players lead the market, with perhaps some smaller players serving purely local markets (and which will be contained by the larger powers in their possibility to expand). The current practice of asymmetrical liberalization supports this development, as it limits the growth of postal operators from smaller companies, thereby deteriorating their future competitive position in a liberalized and integrated European postal market. To create a fair playing ground between larger and smaller countries, the European Commission should implement a -temporary- reciprocity rule, allowing national governments to block foreign companies operating from a non-liberalized home market, to enter (segments of) their national postal market, be it through an owned start-up or through mergers and acquisitions. However, in the end there needs to be a fully liberalized European postal market. The proposed reciprocity rule is a fair measure since companies from small countries are at a disadvantage, even in case of reciprocity, because of their small home markets. The rule should be used to allow the smaller member states to speed up the innovation in their economies in order to absorb the free-falling production factors in case their national postal and logistics clusters cannot compete in an integrated European market. Also, the European Commission needs to view the future development of the postal services no longer as a stand-alone business, but as an integral part of the business of logistic services, since the dynamics of that industry define the dynamics of the postal services.

This paper presents several parametric log linear models for the outdoor delivery cost functions based on a survey of all the French delivery offices in 2001. The main empirical results derived from this set of estimations are the following:

The best approximation of the model by a constant elasticity model gives an elasticity of the cost to the traffic equal to 0.28, confirming the existence of a strong scale economy in the delivery process. A relevant selection of cost drivers for the unit cost of a delivery office uses the traffic per capita, the density and, at a lower level, the total traffic. The total cost elasticity is actually not constant: It increases with the traffic per capita and is a U shape function of the density.

This U shape, highlighted econometrically for the first time, is one of the main contributions of this paper: It is very well explained by the Economics of delivery and it reconciles different anterior results upon costs elasticities.

The design of the delivery process should be treated endogenously. In most of the previous models of the cost of delivery, the design of the process, i.e. the division of the territory into delivery area and the organization of rounds, is considered as given. We have shown that it is useful to treat it as an endogenous component and to explain this by the model. In this paper the design was catch by the use of rounds not dedicated and by the surface of area of each office. In future research we plan to consider jointly endogeneity of the design of the delivery offices and non constant elasticity models.

This paper stresses the importance of the treatment of heterogeneity between delivery offices when estimating economies of scale in outdoor mail delivery activity. We show that models estimated with cross-section data can give biased results and that panel data models encompass cross- section models. In practice this means that empirical estimates of economies of scale in delivery will be underestimated when using cross-section data and researchers should, where possible, adopt panel estimation techniques. In line with these findings we have estimated cost functions for UK outdoor mail activities using panel data that take into account observed heterogeneity by using variables describing the environmental characteristics of delivery offices. Among these variables, the proportion of traffic delivered by non rural routes is introduced in a non linear way (with a stratification of the sample) into the cost models and we find strong evidence of UK outdoor mail delivery activities exhibiting returns to scale with respect to volumes per delivery point that lie in the range of less than 2 to over 4 according to the value of this proportion. These results are consistent with other studies on outdoor delivery costs in France and the USA and add to the growing international literature that substantial fixed costs are incurred in outdoor mail delivery activities.

Reparameterising the estimated model allows further insights into the key factors underpinning the existence of economies of scale in UK outdoor mail delivery activities. Namely, that economies of scale are primarily due to the concentration of traffic per delivery point and that the extent to which Royal Mail benefits from economies of scale depends on the relative growth rate of mail volumes versus the number of delivery points. In general the estimated cost model suggests that the greater the rate of traffic growth relative to the number of delivery points the greater the degree to which Royal Mail benefits from economies of scale and vice versa. These are powerful conclusions to draw from the estimated cost function and suggest that postal policies on the future of the postal markt.