There is a major policy debate within Europe and more widely on how to structure railway systems to enhance competition, whilst minimising costs. This is the first study in the academic literature to examine, using econometric methods, the cost impacts of three different approaches to...

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.

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,...

<title>Abstract</title> In October 2005, the Japan Highway Public Corporation was privatized and separated into three expressway companies. Three other public corporations were privatized as well: the Metropolitan Expressway Public Corporation, the Hanshin Expressway Public Corporation and the Honshu‐Shikoku...

The main purpose of this study is to analyze structural separation policies, especially vertical (i.e. operation-infrastructure) and horizontal (i.e. passenger-freight service) separation. Using the total cost function of a railway organization, we evaluate whether or not vertical separation...

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...

The main purpose of this paper is to estimate and evaluate the social costs of highways in Japan. In general, with more people concerned about protecting the environment at both local and global levels, dependence on vehicular transportation in cities has brought about problems. Too much...

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...

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...