This paper has aimed to provide information useful to policy makers involved in planning for the management of postal service. Five countries were selected?the UK, France, Germany, US and Japan?and the characteristics of their postal services were described in terms of regulation,...

The main purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of internal and external factors most affect a firm' s costs. We consider governance structure and business diversification strategy as internal factors and regulation and competition as external factors. By using 358 observations...

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how organizational slack is created and how it affects a firm’s performance. To address these questions, we construct three equations: managerial incentive function, organizational slack formation function and performance function, and we apply...

Introduction -- An Analysis of the Effect of Demand Response on Electricity Consumption: Assessing Households’ Heterogeneous Reaction to Dynamic Pricing -- Estimation of Tap Water Demand in Japan: A Panel Data Analysis -- Economies of Scale and Consolidation Effects in the Japanese Sewerage...

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how regulation, competition, governance structure, and business diversification strategy affect the cost structure of firms. By using 358 observations comprised of public utility firms and manufacturing firms from 1989 to 2002, we estimate the...