The Political Economy and the Natural Monopoly of the Postal Service: the Swedish case

The postal service is a neglected business in academic historiography. Today’s postal service confronts two challenges: information technology and deregulation. This study deals mostly with deregulatory issues in a historical perspective. Comparisons between different periods in Swedish postal history in regard to competition, cross-subsidisation and bases for a natural monopoly is presented, and also the long-term development of mail volume. It will be argued that there has been quite different attitudes towards competition; that different forms of cross-subsidisation has existed; that the postal service has been a natural monopoly, but for reasons related to change; that mail composition has been transformed from correspondence to mass mail; and that mail volume has increased despite the rise of new modes of communication.