Productivity at the Post: its Drivers and its Distribution

We study the economic, financial and distributional performance of the
United States Postal Service subsequent to its 1971 reorganization. We
investigate the economic sources of productivity change, (technical change,
change in cost efficiency, and scale economies), and the distribution of the
financial benefits of productivity change (consumers of postal services, postal
employees and other resource suppliers, and residual claimants). We find
improvements in technology to have been the main driver of, and diseconomies
of scale to have been the main drag on, productivity change. We find labor to
have been the main beneficiary, and the US Treasury and consumers of postal
services the main losers, from postal reorganization.