Las dimensiones territoriales urbana e interurbana de la liberalización del sector postal y cuestiones de ineficiencia del acceso a la red

Resumen

The universal postal service is characterized by its quality, sustainability, ubiquity and affordable price. It guarantees a set of achievable basic postal services for every user. However, providing the services could lead to inefficiency for the supplier because of the possible market skimming practices by new competitors in urban areas, and/or anexcessively generous access to the incumbent's network which lets inefficient competitors to get into. The welfare gain from the increasing competition could be offset by the lost of efficiency in the profitable urban area if there are new inefficient operators, and also in the rural environment where the main operator's uniform prices are not related with the costs. We analyze how an inadequate ruling of the access to the postal network does not increase competition in the long run, and how the territorial dimension of the liberalization process can affect the network efficiency.