The Effect of Entry Regulation on Process Innovation in the Swiss Mail Industry

Helmut M. Dietl*, Andreas Grütter, Martin Lutzenberger, Cátia Felisberto, Matthias Finger

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We develop an industry specific model of price competition with product differentiation to analyze the effect of entry regulation on process innovation in the Swiss mail industry. We consider the four most prominent scenarios: Regulated monopoly, end-to-end competition, worksharing without bypass, and work-sharing with bypass. Based on model calibration with data from the Swiss letter market, we find that the incentives to invest in process innovations decrease with deregulation. However, even accounting for this fact, the efficiency gains of a partial liberalization, i.e. worksharing, ensure an increase in social welfare.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)37-55
Number of pages19
JournalSwiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
Volume144
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2008
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2008, Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics.

Keywords

  • L51
  • L87
  • end-to-end competition
  • entry regulation
  • mail industry
  • process innovation
  • work-sharing

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