Postal regulators set price controls in order to simultaneously ensure the provision of the universal service, promote competition and equity. We study the associated price control procedures in a model where the universal service provider offers both a single piece product and a business mail...

This paper studies the price structure in a postal sector with a monopolistic operator when customers can engage in worksharing. It presents simulation results obtained from an empirical model that is calibrated on data from the French postal sector. The optimal worksharing discount is...

This paper examines the implications of uncertainty for the structure of optimal commodity taxes in the presence of a linear income tax. Consumers face uncertain income and commit to consumption of some goods before the resolution of uncertainty and to others after. Preferences are separable...

We characterize optimal taxes on polluting and nonpolluting goods in Ramsey and Mirrlees second-best environments. The polluting good tax differs from the Pigouvian tax by Ramsey terms in the first and by Stiglitz/Mirrlees plus another adjustment term in the second. These terms can be positive,...

This note synthesises several research papers that IDEI has produced together with Royal Mail economists and others since 2000 and summarises their findings on the welfare and pricing implications of opening the postal market to competition, when the national postal operator operates under...

Atkinson and Stiglitz (1976) uniform commodity tax result does not hold when (at least) one of the goods is produced within the household. The result is restored if preferences are weakly-separable in market goods versus leisure and household goods.

This paper studies the design of health insurance with ex post moral hazard, when there is imperfect competition in the market for the medical product. Various scenarios, such as monopoly pricing, price negotiation or horizontal differentiation are considered. The insurance contract specifies...

We show that the celebrated Atkinson and Stiglitz (1976) result on the uniformity of the commodity tax rates when preferences are weakly separable between goods and leisure does not hold when (at least) one of the goods is produced within the household. The result is restored if preferences are...

Individuals, differing in productivity and life expectancy, vote over the size and type of a collective annuity. Its type is represented by the fraction of the contributive (Bismarckian) component (based on the workers past earnings) as opposed to the non- contributive (Beveridgean) part (based...

Individuals, differing in productivity and life expectancy, vote over the size and type of a collective annuity. Its type is represented by the fraction of the contributive (Bismarckian) component (based on the workers past earnings) as opposed to the non- contributive (Beveridgean) part (based...