Access Pricing and Entry in the Postal Sector

Abstract

In a fully liberalized postal market, two business models will be possible for a new postal operator: (1) access: where the firm performs the upstream operations and uses the incumbent’s network for final delivery and (2) bypass where the competing firm controls the entire supply chain and delivers mails with its own network. The choice between access and bypass depends on the entrant's delivery cost relative to the access price. In this paper, we derive welfare maximizing prices for the incumbent operator and we show how these prices should be re-balanced when the entry method is considered as endogenous.