Drawing on a new database, this article presents a near-comprehensive list of foreign firms active in British retailing from 1850 to 1979. Used in conjunction with other readily available sources, this data enables us to estimate the total stock of foreign entrants in British retailing from 1850...

<title>Abstract</title>This article reviews the thesis presented by Edmund Phelps, <roman>Mass Flourishing. How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge and Change</roman> (Princeton University Press, 2013) that modern economic growth is an indirect outcome of human creativity, and that the object of enlightened policy...

Introduction

This paper uses original research on the roles played by two sets of foreign entrants into Chinese retailing since the 1850s - the overseas Chinese entrants and western entrants - to explore the psychic distance paradox over the long run. It explains how the advantages of psychic closeness in...

This article describes a newly compiled dataset on foreign multinationals in British retailing and compares the patterns of inward investment in retailing with those in manufacturing. Foreign retailers were present in Britain well before foreign manufacturers, but their numbers did not grow as...

This essay draws on the first systematic study of foreign direct investment in British retailing up to the 1960s. It shows that while foreign multinationals were unimportant in British retailing overall, they dominated some retail trades. Moreover, these retail entrants were mostly not by...

Internationalisation is a useful strategy to gain firm specific advantages during periods of technological discontinuity. The pharmaceutical industry offers us two such episodes as examples: when the antibiotics revolution was beginning and when the possibilities of genetic routes to new drug...

This paper compares the development of the poultry industry in Italy with the UK. Earlier research has suggested that the UK poultry industry developed a symbiotic relationship with the emerging supermarket retailers. Italy had a retarded supermarket sector. Its distribution system favoured...

Nicholas Alexander's (2011. British overseas retailing, 1900--60: International firm characteristics, market selections and entry modes. <italic>Business History</italic>, <italic>53</italic>, 530--556) survey of British overseas retailers from 1900 to 1960 provides pathbreaking new evidence of international retailing activity...