We use UK micro data to explore whether planning regulation reduced UK retailing productivity growth between 1997 and 2003. We document a shift to smaller shops, particularly within supermarket chains, following a regulatory change in 1996 which increased the costs of opening large stores. This...

This paper deals with the issue of transparency in the pricing process for motor fuels, vis-à-vis the collusion charges between oil companies (for which no evidence is found) and the «myth» of «one» national price for motor fuels. Such an approach ignores both the competition between oil...

There is a clear tendency for the Romanian retailing to adapt to the requirements of the international market. If in the years following Romania’s adherence to capitalism the indigenous retailing was marked by a strong segmentation in small retail units with low turnover, retail chains were...

Gibrat’s Law predicts that firm growth is a purely random effect and therefore should be independent of firm size. The purpose of this paper is to test Gibrat’s law within the retail industry, using a novel data-set comprising all Swedish limited liability companies active at some point...

Few studies conceive of land as a productive factor but British land use policies may lower total factor productivity (TFP) in the retailing industry by (i) restricting the total availability of land for retail, thereby increasing space costs (ii) directly limiting store size and (iii)...

In the past 20 years the retail sector has undergone a real internal revolution in terms of management, investment and innovation and in various fields of competence (sectoral, urban development-related, territorial, infrastructure-related). This internal revolution has led leading firms to the...

The restrictions that planning policies impose on retail development have significantly reduced the productivity of supermarkets, according to Paul Cheshire and colleagues.

While being a key sector in all developed economies, retail trade does actually appear to be one of the reasons for Europe’s lagging behind in potential output growth. One of the reasons for this lag could be regulation. By determining conditions for market access and for carrying out a...

In this article internet services for comparison of prices were characterized. Polish main services were shortly described. The additional features in internet services for comparison of prices were shown. The advantages for internet shop of integration with such services were described and...

At a time of a consolidation and an increasing internationalisation of the distributive trade sector, three major phenomena have been simultaneously altering the structure of euro area trade for several years now : the success of hard discounters, the emergence of private-label products, and the...