We provide a theoretical framework to discuss the relation between market size and vertical structure in the railway industry. The framework is based on a simple downstream monopoly model with two input suppliers: the labour force and the rail infrastructure firm. The operation of the downstream...

Covering issues such as deregulation, privatization, organizational reforms, and competition policy, Regulatory Reform of Public Utilities provides a comprehensive summary of regulatory reforms in Japanese public utility industries.

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,...

This study aims to investigate two important issues: whether or not public infrastructure contributes to production in the private sector, and whether or not political economy factors such as political situations, lobbying factors, and the availability of national grants for investment affect...

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...

In Europe, many countries have completely separated their railways into totally separate infrastructure managers and railway undertakings (train operators) and the European Commission has sought to make such complete vertical separation a legal requirement.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate, by using regressions analysis, the DR effect on households' electricity consumption. We employ three kinds of estimation models: a pooled OLS model, a random effect model, and a fixed effect model. Major results are as follows. First, the DR...

The main purpose of this study is to determine whether public capital contributes to productivity growth and, if so, what kind of public capital contributes most. We analyze a dataset of 46 prefectures in Japan over 41 years, from 1955 to 1995, and estimate the production function as the...

Unlike the expressway systems of the U.S. and Europe, where road use is largely free of charge, the Japanese expressway system consists mostly of toll roads. The toll expressway system was instituted after World War II to expedite construction of a nation-wide expressway network. Originally it...

By using the empirical method, this paper analyzes Japan' s ``special" post office and evaluates universal service obligation (USO) costs. With empirical analysis, we obtained the following results. First, the cost of the special post office is about 9.8% higher than that of the ``ordinal" post...