The future of the USO - Economic rationale for universal services and implications for a future-oriented USO

Christian Jaag and Urs Trinkner

No 26, Working Papers from Swiss Economics

Abstract: Universal service obligations (USO) in the postal sector currently enjoy considerable attention among politicians, practitioners and academics. The primary areas of interest have been the viability, costing and funding of the USO in a completely liberalized market. However, the purpose and the scope of the USO itself have so far not been questioned fundamentally. In this paper we first analyze the possible rationale for USO from an economic point of view. Then, we discuss the impact of converging postal and telecommunications markets on potential alternative means to provide USO in a more efficient way.

Keywords: Universal service; USO; covergence; postal sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L43 L50 L87 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.swiss-economics.ch/RePEc/files/0026JaagTrinkner.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chc:wpaper:0026

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Swiss Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Urs Trinkner (urs.trinkner@swiss-economics.ch).