Price-Cap Regulation in the Postal Sector

Abstract

Policy makers in the United States currently are grappling with the complex process of considering an improved regulatory framework to govern the national postal operator. The motivations for changing the present system, based on cost recovery, range from long-standing dissatisfaction with the status quo to recent fear that technological developments in communication threaten the core postal business.

...there are lessons to be learned from these and other progressive postal administrations’ efforts at reform, lessons which may prove workable at home. Many postal deregulation and privatization proponents cite the examples of foreign posts as blueprints for privatization of our postal system.

Congressman John M. McHugh

Chairman, Subcommittee on the Postal Service Committee on Government Reform and Oversight

United States House of Representatives

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Mark Twain

The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of either PricewaterhouseCoopers, the United States General Accounting Office, or the United States Postal Service.