The Council of Economic Advisers

January 2019

September 29, 2017

The U.S., the International Postal 

System, and the UPU: An Economic 

Framework
CEA • The U.S., the International Postal System, and the UPU: An Economic Framework 1

The U.S., the International Postal System, and the UPU: 

An Economic Framework

January 2019

A member of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) since its founding in 1874, the U.S. in October of 

2018 submitted notice of its intention to withdraw from the organization. This action reflects 

the Administration’s priority of achieving a U.S. role in the international postal system 

consistent with the vision articulated in the August 23, 2018 Presidential Memorandum, a 

vision that would advance the interests of the U.S. alongside those of a number of other 

countries.

The historic nature of the set of reforms to the international postal system to be undertaken by 

the U.S. in 2019 reflects the historic nature of the changes in the economics of the international 

postal system that have occurred in recent years. These reforms are poised to occur through 

steps taken by the U.S. upon its exit from the UPU in October 2019. In the event that the UPU 

passes reforms that fully effect the principles of the Presidential Memorandum before then, 

however, the U.S. could achieve its objectives without fulfilling its intention to withdraw. The 

U.S. stands therefore poised to adopt a remuneration system for items likely to contain goods 

that consists of nondiscriminatory “self-declared” rates that do not favor foreign mailers over 

domestic mailers or postal operators over non-postal operators. The only question is the 

compatibility of this achievement with U.S. membership in the UPU. 

The U.S. commitment to ensuring the provision of the benefits the UPU originally intended to 

deliver at the time of its founding in 1874 has not changed. However, developments in the state 

of technology and the global economy have, in recent years, upended the economics of the 

international postal system. These changes have resulted in the UPU’s “terminal dues” 

remuneration system imposing net costs on the national economies of certain member 

countries, including the U.S. While the costs imposed by the UPU’s remuneration system for 

items likely to contain goods have in recent years increased for the U.S., the costs of exiting the 

UPU have decreased. As a result, the costs of U.S. membership in the UPU relative to its benefits 

has trended upward. In the spirit of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s 

admonition against the evaluation of “policies and programs by their intentions rather than 

results,” the Administration’s approach to the U.S. role in the international postal system 

reflects its prioritization of the results that the international postal system delivers. 

The emergence of substitutes for some of the services provided by the UPU has lowered the 

cost of U.S. withdrawal from the organization. Technological change has created these 

substitutes. For example, the very first article of the Treaty of Bern that is the UPU’s foundation 
CEA • The U.S., the International Postal System, and the UPU: An Economic Framework 2

underscores the goal of creating of “a single postal territory for the reciprocal exchange of 

correspondence between their post-offices.” One plausible substitute for this function, e-mail, 

is estimated to generate over $8,000 in value per year for the median consumer and is available 

to anyone with access to the Internet at a typical marginal cost of zero (Brynjolffson et. al. 

2018). A single substitute for the exchange of correspondence, then, appears to generate 

annual economic value for today’s median consumer in excess of the entirety of real U.S. GDP 

per capita in 1874 (Maddison Project 2018). Analysis of the international postal sector 

corroborates a direct link between global decline in volumes of letters since 1990 and the rise 

of technology like e-mail (Copenhagen Economics 2017). Due to technology, then, the 

“exchange of correspondence” across international borders could occur for the approximately 

90 percent of American adults who use the Internet without access to the UPU’s single postal 

network (Anderson et. al. 2018). This decreases the cost of a prospective exit from the UPU 

relative to a world in which services like email could not substitute for international mail’s role 

in facilitating the exchange of correspondence.

While the costs of exit from the UPU have decreased, the costs attributable to its remuneration 

system for items likely to contain goods have not. The UPU’s existing “terminal dues” 

remuneration system determines the rates (i.e., prices) that one country’s designated postal 

operator receives from a foreign postal operator for completing the delivery of post originating 

in the foreign country. But these prices do not, under the status quo, need to have any 

relationship to either the cost the designated postal operator incurs for completing the 

delivery or to the prices that it would charge a domestic mailer (i.e., customer of the postal 

service) for completing similar services. This creates conditions ripe for prices deviating from 

what they would be in the world of “unrestricted and undistorted competition in the provision 

of international postal services” envisioned in the August 23 Presidential Memorandum. Under 

the status quo, for instance, foreign posts can pay prices that are a fraction of those offered to 

U.S. producers for the delivery of the same goods between the same two places by USPS 

(Fountain and Malone 2018; Navarro 2018).

Instead, the scope of the economic costs that the terminal dues remuneration system could 

impose has increased due to the increase in volumes of goods transiting the international 

postal stream in recent years (Copenhagen Economics 2017). With the introduction of goods 

into the international postal stream, distortions in the pricing of international postal services 

created by the UPU’s remuneration system can impose costs on producers and consumers who 

do not transact directly with any postal operator. These distortions in the pricing of 

international postal services for items likely to contain goods would be expected, like any set 

of price distortions, to lead to the type of misallocations of the factors of production that lower 

standards of living in both developed and developing countries (e.g., Jones 2013; Restuccia 

and Rogerson 2017). If, by contrast, the international post were exclusively letters (i.e., 
CEA • The U.S., the International Postal System, and the UPU: An Economic Framework 3

correspondence), these distortions of prices within the postal sector would affect only the 

postal operators and mailers of letters directly involved in postal transactions.

The rise of e-commerce allows these price distortions within the postal sector to impose

burdens on actors throughout the global economy. According to one survey of e-commerce 

consumers in 31 countries, 84 percent of cross-border goods purchased online are of the type 

that would be subject to the terminal dues system if delivered by a designated postal operator 

(International Postal Corporation 2018). Any economics textbook would lead to the conclusion 

that these distortions in the price of shipping, in a competitive e-commerce market, induce 

additional distortions in underlying economic activity. First, these differences in consumer 

prices could influence and distort outcomes within the e-commerce sector, in which the 

sensitivity of consumer demand to price differences can exceed its sensitivity during “brick 

and mortar” shopping (e.g., Ellison and Ellison 2009). Second, any distortions in the prices of 

e-commerce goods could induce substitution toward online and away from “offline” retail 

vendors. New evidence that consumers have rates of substitution between online and offline 

vendors comparable to their rates of substitution between offline vendors underscores the 

plausibility of distortions accruing through this channel (Dolfen et. al. 2018). And at least some 

offline establishments appear to generate positive local externalities or spillovers in terms of 

employment and output (e.g., Shoag and Veuger 2018), a condition that would both enlarge 

the magnitude of the aggregate costs that could be imposed by online-offline substitution and 

broaden the scope of who bears these costs to include workers and producers even in the nontradable sector. Complementing this retail-specific evidence, Barrot et. al. (2017) 

demonstrates that the differences in the local exposure to the general import competition 

generated by differences in shipping costs can affect local employment, local output, and even 

household finances.1 

A paucity of data on the value of goods transiting the international postal system prevents 

estimation of the aggregate macroeconomic burden imposed by the price distortions that 

result from the terminal dues system for items likely to contain goods. Nonetheless, in the case 

of the U.S., the economics of the current U.S. role in the existing terminal dues system permits 

the inference that these distortions exist, and that the incidence of the burden they impose 

could fall on a variety of actors in the tradable and even non-tradable sectors. Given the 

upward trend over time in the share of e-commerce items in the international postal system, 

in the absence of a change to the remuneration system, these economic costs of the distortions 

it imposes would only increase (Copenhagen Economics 2017). 

 1 The official trade data from the U.S. Census Bureau that informs the approach of Barrot et. al. (2017), however, 

would not capture information about any goods that enter the U.S. through the international postal system. 

Barrot et. al. (2018) details the methodology for constructing the data used in Barrot et. al. (2017), including the 

role of official trade statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. 
CEA • The U.S., the International Postal System, and the UPU: An Economic Framework 4

This Administration’s approach to the reform of the terminal dues system, while consistent 

with the spirit of U.S. concerns about the UPU’s relationship to “marketplace competition in 

international mail” expressed as early as the Reagan Administration, reflects the novelty of 

these developments in the international postal sector’s role in economic activity (Reagan 

1986). The Administration’s attempts at terminal dues reform in 2018 amounted to a strategy 

of voice in the canonical “exit, voice, or loyalty” economics framework articulated by 

Hirschman (1970) for rational approaches for the redress of grievances from within an 

organization. But sufficient progress towards the realization of the vision laid out in the 

Presidential Memorandum has yet to materialize, and, per Hirschman (1970), voice and exit 

can be substitutes as well as complements. If negotiations continue to fail to yield sufficient 

progress, the U.S. stands poised to move forward on its path towards exit from the UPU rather 

than continue its strategy of voice from within.

The vision articulated in the August 23 Presidential Memorandum looks toward the 

international postal system’s future rather than its past. The UPU’s founders in 1874 spoke of 

an international organization that facilitated correspondence around the world. But since 1990 

the volume of letters transiting the international postal system has trended downward, while 

the volume of items containing goods has trended upward (Copenhagen Economics 2017). 

Developing countries in particular seem to substitute electronic correspondence for letters 

(Copenhagen Economics 2017). 

Given these changes in the international postal stream and its underlying economics, realizing 

the vision of “undistorted and unrestricted competition” articulated in the Presidential 

Memorandum would deliver benefits to both developing and developed countries, a reality 

reflected in the unanimous endorsement of the concerns voiced by the U.S. by the twenty-eight 

members of the Postal Union of the Americas, Spain, and Portugal (PUASP 2018). Other 

countries, including China and the Netherlands, seem to favor the UPU embracing a 

remuneration system for items likely to contain goods that dates to an era when the 

international post comprised many fewer goods and many more letters. To minimize the 

distortions created by postal remuneration policy given the underlying economics of the postal 

sector, the U.S. intends to adopt a system of self-declared and non-discriminatory rates of 

remuneration for items likely to contain goods. The U.S. would welcome the opportunity to 

realize this forward-looking vision for its role in international postal system as a member of the 

international postal union that it helped to found. 
CEA • The U.S., the International Postal System, and the UPU: An Economic Framework 5

References

Anderson, Moniica, Andrew Perrin, and Jingjing Jiang. 2018. Pew Research. “11% of 

Americans Don’t Use the Internet. Who Are They?” http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2018/03/05/some-americans-dont-use-the-internet-who-are-they/.

Barrot, Jean-Noel, Erik Loualiche, Matthew. Plosser, Julien. Sauvagnat. 2017. Federal Reserve 

Bank of New York. “Import Competition and Household Debt.” Staff Report No. 821. 

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr821.pdf.

Barrot, Jean-Noel, Erik Loualiche, and Julien Sauvagnat. 2018. “The Globalization Risk 

Premium.” Journal of Finance (forthcoming). 

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2586047.

Brynjolfsson, Erik, Felix Eggers, and Avinash Gannamaneni. 2018. “Using Massive Online 

Choice Experiments to Measure Changes in Well-being.” National Bureau of Economic 

Working Paper 245414. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24514.

Copenhagen Economics. 2017. Report prepared for the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission. 

“Terminal Dues: Impact on Financial Transfers Among Designated Postal Operators of the 

Universal Postal Union 2018-2021 Cycle Agreements.” 

https://www.prc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/Terminal%20Dues_Impact%20on%20financi

al%20transfers_FINAL%2022%20September%202017.pdf.

Dolfen, Paul, Liran Einav, Peter Klenow, Benjamin Klopack, Jonathan Levin, Larry Levin, and 

Wayne Best. 2018. “Assessing the Gains from E-Commerce.” 

https://web.stanford.edu/~bklopack/assessing-gains-ecommerce.pdf.

Ellison, Glenn, and Sara Fisher Ellison. 2009. "Search, Obfuscation, and Price Elasticities on 

the Internet." Econometrica 77 (2): 427-452.

Fountain, Nick and Kenny Malone. 2018. “The Postal Illuminati.” National Public Radio. 

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=634732388.

Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, 

Organizations, and States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

International Postal Corporation. 2018. “Cross Border E-Commerce Shopper Survey 2017: Key 

Findings.” https://www.ipc.be/services/markets-and-regulations/cross-border-shoppersurvey.

Jones, Charles I. 2013. "Misallocation, Economic Growth, and Input-Output Economics" in D. 

Acemoglu, M. Arellano, and E. Dekel, Advances in Economics and Econometrics, Tenth World 
CEA • The U.S., the International Postal System, and the UPU: An Economic Framework 6

Congress, Volume II, Cambridge University Press. 

https://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/JonesMisallocationIO2013.pdf.

Maddison Project Database. 2018. Bolt, Jutta, Robert Inklaar, Herman de Jong and Jan Luiten 

van Zanden. “Rebasing ‘Maddison’: New Income Comparisons and the Shape of Long-run 

Economic Development.” Maddison Project Working Paper 10.

Navarro, Peter. 2018. “Global Postal Rates Give Chinese Companies an Unfair Advantage.” 

Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-aadb-11e8-8253-48106866cd8a.

Postal Union of the Americas, Spain, and Portugal (PUASP). 2018. “Situación de los Estados 

Unidos de América en relación al Sistema de Remuneración Integrada de la UPU.” Original 

document as well as a translation from the original Spanish provided by the U.S. Postal 

Service. 

Reagan, Ronald. 1986. Letter to the Honorable Albert Casey, Postmaster General of the United

States. May 1. 

Restuccia, Diego, and Richard Rogerson. 2017. "The Causes and Costs of 

Misallocation." Journal of Economic Perspectives 31 (3): 151-74. 

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.31.3.151.

Shoag, Daniel, and Stan Veuger. 2018. "Shops and the City: Evidence on Local Externalities 

and Local Government Policy from Big-box Bankruptcies." Review of Economics and 

Statistics 100 (4): 440-453. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/rest_a_00703.