MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION
SIR,—While fully agreeing with Graham Hutton's argument, in your issue of December 3, under the title ' More Skilled Manage- ment,' that in order to near Mr. Butler's target of doubling our standard of living as a nation in twenty-five years, productivity in the non-industrial sectors in general, and in retail trade in particular, will have to be increased, I should like to question his state- ment that Britain has the ' highest number of retail shops per head in the world.'
In a study published in Paris this year by Professor Jeanneney, Les Commerces de Detail en Europe Occidentale, the author estimates the number of shops per thousand inhabitants for eleven European countries and the United States. He states that Great Britain has more sh?ps per head than Italy, Sweden and the United States; virtually the same number as Western Germany and Norway; and fewer shops per head than Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, the Nether-: lands, France and Belgium. These results seem open to question in detail, in so far as when the. British and United States census data are brought on to a strictly comparable basis, we have found, in an analysis of census data currently being made at Oxford, that these two countries have about the same number of retail outlets per head. 'It is, however, unlikely that the general picture is very different from that suggested by Professor Jeannency's figures.—Yours faithfully,
MARGARET HALL
Somerville College, Oxford
Previous page
