UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Retail productivity

Griffith, R.; Harmgart, H.; (2005) Retail productivity. (IFS Working Papers W05/07). Institute for Fiscal Studies: London, UK. Green open access

[thumbnail of 2724.pdf]
Preview
PDF
2724.pdf

Download (81kB)

Abstract

Recent attention has focused on the UK's productivity gap in the retail sector. Figure 1 shows an estimate of labour productivity in retail across countries, using output per hour worked. The UK lies well behind the US, France and Germany. Reynolds at al (2005) contribute to this debate by providing a discussion of the literature, along side interviews with several UK and US retail firms. The conclusions of their paper are that, while there are many measurement issues, most of the evidence points to the fact that, on average, productivity in this sector in the UK is low and has grown slowly over recent years when compared to the US. They rightly point out that a more thorough understanding of what drives productivity in the retail sector requires a better understanding of the 'complex mix of urban characteristics, consumer preferences and competitive rivalries'. In this article we discuss some of the main issues involved in the measurement of productivity in retail, how these problems can be tackled, and we consider the interpretation of these statistics. We then discuss new work using microdata on the UK supermarket industry and conclude with a short discussion of where future research needs to look to answer the important policy questions around why the UK's productivity performance remains low in this important sector.

Type: Working / discussion paper
Title: Retail productivity
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1920/wp.ifs.2005.0507
Language: English
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/2724
Downloads since deposit
4,651Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item