Postal Sectors Research Articles

Driving forces of CO2 emissions from the transport, storage and postal sectors: A pathway to achieving carbon neutrality

In tandem with the urbanisation process, China's transport sector is currently experiencing rapid development and was ranked third out of all the industrial sectors in terms of generating CO2 emissions in 2020, which poses a huge challenge to achieving carbon neutrality. Primarily using the energy consumption data from China's transport, storage and postal sectors (TSPS) and input and output data between 2007 and 2020, this study first uses the Tapio decoupling model to evaluate the decoupling effect in the TSPS. Structural decomposition analysis is then applied to explore sectoral linkages and decompose the forces driving CO2 emissions. Additionally, we explore the main determinants of the energy structure effect and final demand in terms of energy consumption and industrial sector demand. Our results show that the target sector experienced a weak decoupling, which implies that the low-carbon transformation of this sector became increasingly apparent. Factor decomposition shows that improvements in energy intensity, energy structure and the production input and output structure have contributed significantly to reducing CO2 emissions, but these gains have been largely offset by final demand, resulting in a net reduction of 27.97 million tons from 2007 to 2020. The increased usage of low carbon forms of energy, such as natural gas, is the key driver behind the emissions reduction effect in terms of the energy structure. However, the higher final demand from the construction sector and the wholesale and retail trades are the main factors that have increased CO2 emissions. By adopting a sectoral and energy structure decomposition perspective, our study can be used to provide guidance to governments seeking to pursue carbon-reduction policies to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality, in the TSPS in particular.

Impact of Covid-19 on the Logistics Sector of Public Postal Operators in The Western Balkans

The Covid-19 pandemic has a direct impact on the social, economic, political, and other segments of society through a large number of lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. The largest postal and logistics companies as an integral part of the supply chain have been directly affected by the Covid 19 pandemic. Disruption in the supply chain significantly affects the movement of goods and the economic development of countries. This paper investigates the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the logistics sector, with special emphasis on public postal operators (PPO) in some countries of the Western Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia). The paper analyzes the movement of express shipments in domestic transport, as well as imports and exports for 2020. There is almost no research on the implications of the covid-19 pandemic on the postal and logistics sectors of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. The aim of this research is to understand the impact of the pandemic on this sector.

How Does High-Speed Rail Impact the Industry Structure? Evidence from China

The economic implications of high-speed rail (HSR) cannot be overlooked in China. This paper studies the impact of HSR on the advancement and rationalization of industrial structure and the tertiary industry aggregation through theoretical derivation and multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) by improving the theoretical framework and empirical methods according to the characteristics of China's HSR and economic development. From analyses on urban heterogeneity and inter-industry spillover effects, the transmission mechanism and expressions of the industrial structure are also discussed. The findings show that HSR promotes tertiary industry aggregation and contributes to the transformation of the industrial structure from the primary to secondary and tertiary industry sectors, as well as realizing industrial structure advancement but irrationalization. Furthermore, HSR has a more significant influence on tertiary industry aggregation in large cities and high-density cities. Additionally, the aggregation of the transportation, warehousing, and postal sectors has been reduced, with a significant spillover effect on neighboring cities, proving the siphon effect and conduction mechanism, resulting in a structural shift in the tertiary industry, from basic to advanced sectors. The movement of human resources is a key mediator in the economic impact of HSR.

Involvement and Support: Antecedents to performance at work place

Business houses wishes to increase the frequency of positive work outcomes like performance that basically is a blend of several work attitudes like Involvement of organizational support perceived by employees. Work attitudes like these enhance performance leading to enhancement of quality in service performance, brand image of an organization, development and profitability. Work attitudes though, a well thought out field in management literature. However, attitudes like employee Involvement and organizational support, still, in infancy, as far as research regarding these variables is concerned. The study is an endeavour in this regard to examine work attitudes like Involvement and organizational support perceived by employees and impact on performance. The organizations forming part of the survey are from banking, insurance and postal sectors. Structural equation modelling technique is used for data analysis. The outcome represents positive relationship between the constructs.

China’s Energy Transition Policy Expectation and Its CO2 Emission Reduction Effect Assessment

Measuring the expected impact of China’s energy transition on carbon dioxide (CO2) mitigation and identifying the key influencing factors in different economic sectors will help to provide better policy recommendations for CO2 emission reduction. Based on the prediction results of China’s CO2 emissions in 2030 under the baseline scenario and the target scenario, this study constructs the control group and the treatment group of the energy transition policy quasinatural experiment and then uses the difference in difference (DID) model to evaluate the CO2 emission reduction effect of China’s energy transition policy. The results reveal that the energy transition policy has a significant impact on CO2 emission reduction and helps to achieve China’s 2030 carbon emission reduction target. The impact of energy structure transition on CO2 emission reduction has significant sectoral heterogeneity, which has a positive reduction effect in the industry sector, wholesale and retail sectors, and accommodation and catering sectors, but its reduction effect is not obvious in transportation, storage, and postal sectors. It is suggested that China should implement the sector-differentiated CO2 mitigation strategy, focus on improving the industrial sector’s energy efficiency, and promote the clean, low-carbon transition of energy consumption structure in construction, transportation, storage, and postal industries.

Postal Services: Survey of Competition Law Developments: 2018

This article summarises the most significant competition law developments in the postal services sector in 2018, at EU level and at national level in France, Germany, and the UK.1 2018 has seen an important judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU (‘CJEU’) concerning the permissible scope of postal services regulation pursuant to the EU Postal Services Directive, Directive 97/67 (as amended). In the State aid area, the European Commission has adopted decisions approving State aid for the universal service providers in the postal service sectors of Denmark, France, and the Czech Republic. The Commission also adopted a decision requiring Spain to recover €167 million unlawful State aid from the incumbent Spanish universal service provider, Correos. At national level, in the UK, Ofcom adopted a decision that Royal Mail had abused a dominant position by discriminating in its downstream network access prices to competing delivery companies and fined Royal Mail £50 million.

Sufficient Exposure to Competition and Its Implications for Energy Entities in EU Public Procurement

Utilities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors are in principle bound to the EU/EEA rules on public procurement concerning the purchases of goods, works or services, regardless of whether they are public or private. The reasons for this are historical and technical. These entities were and still are under State influence – either because they remain publicly owned or are controlled and/or supervised by it – and because they tend to operate in network industries with “bottlenecks” in which competition is limited. Subjection to the procurement utilities rules implies that these contracting entities will have to carry out tender procedures when purchasing goods that are intended for the pursuit of their activities. This applies either when they operate on the basis of especial or exclusive rights (if they are private) or when they qualify as a contracting authority. For energy entities this means whenever an actor that provides or operates energy services such as the production, transport or distribution of gas or heat or electricity, as well as the supply of gas or heat or electricity to such networks, all their purchases will have to comply with the Utilities Directive. ‘Supply’ includes generation/production, wholesale and retail markets. Also, the procurement regime applies to activities relating to the exploitation for the purpose of extracting oil or gas and exploring for or extracting coal or other solid fuels. Thus, generators, distributors, TSOs, and even energy traders could be under the scope of this Directive.

制造业与其它部门间的消耗情况分析—基于2012年贵州省投入产出表

基于2012年贵州省19部门投入产出表所进行的产业关联分析显示，其制造业部门对贵州经济有较强的拉动和推动作用。找出与制造业关联性较强的部门，并着力其发展，会更好地促进贵州经济的发展，因此本文基于贵州省投入产出表对制造业与其他部门间的相互消耗情况进行分析。其结果表明，制造业与交通运输、仓储和邮政业部门的相互依赖性较强；其对采矿业，电力、热力、燃气及水生产和供应业两部门的消耗更多，发展制造业部门可较大程度的带动这两个部门的发展；而建筑业等部门消耗更多的制造业部门产品。着力于这些部门的发展能为制造业部门的发展提供条件。 Based on the industrial correlation analysis of the input and output table of 19 departments in Guizhou Province in 2012, the manufacturing sector has a strong pulling and promoting effect on Guizhou economy. It is better to promote the development of Guizhou economy, so this paper analyzes the mutual consumption between manufacturing industry and other departments based on the input-output table of Guizhou Province, and finds out the relationship between manufacturing industry and other departments. The results show that the manufacturing sector is highly interdependent with the transportation, warehousing and postal sectors. The consumption of the manufacturing sector for the two sectors of the mining industry, electricity, heat, gas and water production and supply is much more; the development of the manufacturing sector can drive the two departments, while the construction sector and other sectors consume more manufacturing sector products. Focusing on the development of these sectors can provide conditions for the development of the manufacturing sector.

Employee Engagement and Relationship Quality Leading Performance

Job Attitudes and leader member relationship quality enhance individual and organizational outcomes. Organizations seek to increase the frequency of individual outcomes like employee performance. Job attitudes have been a well researched construct in the management literature. However, constructs like employee engagement have received least attention in recent past. The current study, would explore the influence of employee engagement and leader member exchange quality on service performance of employees. The participatory organizations were from insurance, postal and banking sectors, of service economy of Kashmir region, from the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The Survey method was used for data collection purposes, where in data was collected, through combination of structured questionnaires followed by interviews. The sample size of 380 respondents were selected representing middle management, frontline, lower level employees and customers. The data were analyzed using SPSS software package, where in technique like structural equation modelling is utilized to analyze and interpret the given data. The results revealed significant positive relationships between employee engagement and service performance as well as between leader member exchange and service performance.

Perceived Organizational Support and Employee Citizenship Behaviors an Intermediating Variable between LMX and Service Performance

Leader Member Exchange theory believes that leaders from different relationships with different members ranging from high quality to low quality. High quality relationships exist with in-group members and are characterized by mutual trust, respect, and responsibility while as low quality exist with out-group members and are restricted to economic exchanges, formal job requirements. LMX has been in significant relationship with various job attitudes like employee satisfaction, involvement, engagement across different service sectors like health, hospitality. However, exploration of LMX in service sectors like insurance, banking and postal is rare in LMX literature. Therefore, the current study would study LMX in relation with perceived organizational support, Organizational Citizenship Behavior and service performance of employees across banking, insurance and postal service sectors of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The Survey method with structured questionnaires and interviews are used as techniques of data collection. A sample size of 100 respondents representing middle management, frontline staff, lower level employees and customers were part of the study. Data was analyzed using data analysis tool SPSS. Techniques like descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze and interpret data and results. The statistical coefficients revealed significant and positive relationship between LMX and POS; LMX and OCB; LMX and Service Performance; POS and Service Performance and OCB and Service Performance.

ASSESSING PHYSICAL DISORDER IN URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS: RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE PARCEL MAINTENANCE OBSERVATION TOOL

Research on neighborhood factors that influence health and crime often use neighborhood measures of geographic areas such as census tracts, wards, and postal sectors. These administratively defined areas, however, may mask the heterogeneity of neighborhood influences. In response to calls for more specific measures, we tested the reliability and validity of the Parcel Maintenance Observation Tool (PMOT)-a new measure of physical disorder on property parcels. The results included baseline assessments of 6134 parcels in 2 urban neighborhoods, inter-correlations, inter-rater reliability, and tests of concurrent validity. Most of the measures had high or adequate inter-rater reliability. The PMOT measures differentiated between (a) parcels with occupied and unoccupied buildings and (b) vacant lots included in a property maintenance program and no-program vacant lots. The discussion focuses on potential uses of the PMOT for understanding the effects of neighborhood physical disorder and for evaluating health promotion and crime prevention programs.

Scope of Negative Integration: A Comparative Analysis of Post, Public Transport and Port Services

AbstractThere is extensive literature that explains how liberalization policy deepens and widens. In the literature of European integration such reform is commonly considered to be the result of a bias towards liberalization in the treaties, thereby giving the European Commission and the European Court of Justice wide‐ranging leverage to enforce such reform. However, such approaches have been criticized for being de‐politicized – for failing to understand the conflicts inherent in controversial policies. It is therefore of interest to explore the scope conditions of this constitutional bias assumption in areas where liberalization policy is disputed. This article analyzes the EU decision‐making processes across the postal, public transport and port service sectors, highlighting three key conditions, in addition to the treaties' legal foundation. These are: the organization of public services; mobilization by large interests, such as trade unions; and how willing the European Commission is to give in to concessional demands.

Lobbying in the Postal and Telecommunications Sectors: What Civil Servants Want

In the postal and telecommunications sectors, operators and users’ groups employ regulatory specialists to monitor policy developments and to attempt to influence the direction those developments take. Among the contacts with whom these regulatory specialists must, in doing so, engage, are officials at ministries, departments and directorates. The authors have interviewed 15 such officials and surveyed 28, from across Europe and Australasia. The results have shown scope for improvement in the approach taken by regulatory specialists. More interestingly, the results have also given clues as to the manner in which this improvement could most usefully be achieved. This includes ensuring that, in the short-term battle to influence policy, the regulatory specialist does not risk their long-term credibility. That achieved, the results also suggest that regulatory specialists should temper their expectations, frame arguments in broad economic terms, and share as much objective information as possible. According to interviewees and survey respondents, improving their approach in these ways will help regulatory specialists ensure their message is not only more likely to be understood but also more likely to be believed.

The Janus Face of Europeanisation: Explaining Cross-Sectoral Differences in Public Utilities

Although policymakers have sought to liberalise network-based utilities, a more detailed look at privatisation pathways reveals remarkable sector-specific differences. This article examines why efforts to privatise public utilities have differed so greatly in the telecommunications, postal, and railway sectors. By estimating probit models, it is demonstrated that firm characteristics and sector-specific EU integration account for cross-sectoral differences in privatisation. More specifically, governments dispose of the most efficient firms first to maximise revenues from privatisation sales with low political costs. Regulations at the European level pushed governments to privatise their national postal providers, while privatisation in the telecommunications sector is a global trend. In the railway sector, exceptional clauses and regulations have decelerated privatisation.

El Órgano Administrativo de Recursos Contractuales de la Comunidad Autónoma de Euskadi y los órganos colegiados de los Territorios Históricos

Fruto de la modificación del régimen de recursos en materia de contractos por la Ley 34/2010, de reforma de la Ley 30/2007, de Contratos del Sector Público, y de la Ley 31/2007, de contratos en los sectores del agua, la energía, los transportes y los servicios postales, se han ido creando en las Comunidades Autónomas órganos independientes y especializados para la resolución de tales recursos en su ámbito de competencias. En el presente trabajo nos ocuparemos del régimen de organización y funcionamiento de los órganos que a tal fin se han creado en la Comunidad Autónoma de Euskadi y que es el Órgano Administrativo de Recursos Contractuales. Órgano que convive con los correspondientes que se han creado también y previamente en los Territorios Históricos de Álava, Bizkaia y Gipuzkoa, que serán objeto de nuestra atención.

Discourses, Conflicts, and Compromises of Privatization: Process of Privatization in the German Rail, Postal, and Telecommunication Service Sectors

Discourses, Conflicts, and Compromises of Privatization: Process of Privatization in the German Rail, Postal, and Telecommunication Service Sectors

Radon and Skin Cancer — Yet Another Risk Factor for Squamous Cell Carcinoma?

Radon is an invisible gas that rises from uranium-emitting bedrock that releases radium-226. Radon is listed by the WHO as a significant risk factor for the development of lung cancer. Investigators analyzed skin cancer incidence in 287 postal code sectors in southwest England with statistics on radon emissions. Using household …

The Liberalization of European Postal Markets: The Response of Firms and Impacts on Employment and Services

From 2011 onwards the last remaining barriers to competition in most European postal markets will be eliminated. Supporters of liberalization and privatization have argued that competition and private ownership will induce service providers to improve efficiency. And greater efficiency will benefit service users as services will become cheaper and of better quality. This article challenges the view that liberalization and privatization unanimously enhance efficiency and quality and equally benefit all service users. Based on a series of company studies, it argues that liberalization and privatization in the European postal sectors had mixed effects with respect to efficiency and quality and mostly negative effects for employment and working conditions. It furthermore questions the idea that the changes have equally benefited all users. Actually, liberalization and privatization have fuelled diversification and fragmentation, producing winners and losers from the restructuring processes.

Environmental Cost and Universal Service Obligations in the Postal Sector

During the last two decades, the postal sectors in the EU member states have faced twomajor trends. On the one hand, markets have been liberalized to an increasing degree,and full liberalization is now just around the corner. On the other hand, traditionalpostal products have been subject to an increasing degree of competition from electronicsubstitutes. The first trend has been extensively studied in the literature and its impli-cations are by now well understood. The electronic substitutes have also received a lotof attention but the jury is still out when it comes to assessing their precise impact onthe demand for postal products in the coming years and decades.A third major trend which is likely to have a significant effect on the future of thepostal sector has hitherto largely been ignored by the literature: the increasing im-portance of sustainable growth considerations and of environmental policy. The postalsector affects the environment through at least two channels: the consumption of paperon the one hand, and CO

Polymorphisms at newly identified lipid-associated loci are associated with blood lipids and cardiovascular disease in an Asian Malay population

We conducted a cross-sectional study of Malay participants aged 40-80 years (n = 2,932) to examine the associations between polymorphisms at newly identified, lipid-associated loci with blood lipid levels and prevalent cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a Malay population in Asia. A polymorphism adjacent to the TRIB1 locus (rs17321515) was associated with elevated total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) after adjustment for age and sex (both P values <0.007) and with increased risk of coronary heart disease and CVD [odds ratio (OR) 1.23, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.03-1.46; and OR 1.2, 95% CI 1.02-1.42, respectively] under an additive model of inheritance. In addition, using recessive models of inheritance, polymorphisms on chromosome 19 adjacent to the CILP2 and PBX4 loci (rs16996148) and on chromosome 1 at the GALNT2 locus (rs4846914) were associated with elevated HDL-C (P = 0.005) and lower LDL-C (P = 0.048), respectively. Although novel, the former is consistent with the association between this polymorphism and lower blood triglycerides observed in the initial studies conducted in populations of European ancestry. Neither showed statistically significant association with CVD. These observations should form the basis of further investigation to identify the causative polymorphisms at this locus, and also to understand the mechanistic roles that this protein may play in lipoprotein metabolism in Asians and other populations.