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The objective of this paper is to quantify the net effect that the massive opening of edge or out-of-town superstores, which took place in Great Britain in the mid-eighties and early nineties, had on local employment. Our data set consists of the location and the opening dates of Tesco and Sainsbury’s stores, in combination with Census of Employment data from 1984 to 1991. Using both a fixed-effects specification and a system-GMM specification which allows to control for endogeneity, we find that in spite of the adverse effects they had on competing smaller stores, superstores had an overall positive net effect on employment.

Summary The development and implications of food superstores in Great Britain have been the focus of much study. Most analysis and research however has had the drawback of being based solely on successful superstore applications (i.e. trading stores). A recent example of such work has appeared in this journal (Guy, 1988). It is argued here however that such analyses provide an incomplete understanding of spatial strategies, planning policy effectiveness and the development of superstores. A better understanding is afforded through an analysis of all superstore applications, i.e. applications which are unsuccessful as well as those that succeed. A database for planning applications for superstores is used here to provide first an introductory analysis of superstore development processes in Great Britain and to a lesser extent, Wales, and secondly a critical analysis of Guy's (1988) study of superstore development in South Wales.