Thursday, April 07, 2005

Trolley Wars
Author:Judi Bevan
The story of the ferocious battle for supremacy of the four main supermarket chains in Britain - Sainsbury, Tesco, Safeway and Asda. There are dynasties in decline, upstarts coming of age and those who struggle by the wayside.

The story of how Tesco came from brash beginnings to challenge and finally overtake the patrician Sainsbury as the market leader in 1995 stunned the retailing world, and raised the curtain on the dramatic rise of supermarket chains in the second half of the 20th century.

Behind the bare statistics of roller coaster profits and changing market shares lies a deeper tale of social change, increasing power and clashes with Government and pressure groups. The huge buying power of the supermarket chains, and the growth of edge of town shopping with vast car parking, has destroyed many small high streets along with traditional butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers. Yet their growth has been fuelled by the increase in the numbers of working women who no longer have the time or inclination to shop by foot at small outlets. The result is a love/hate relationship with their customers.

The fever of competition engendered by the heads of these companies cannot be underestimated. This book goes behind the checkout till and into the boardroom to discover the true story and show what will happen next.
The Government and Politics of the European Union
Author:Neill Nugent;

This new edition of Neill Nugent's widely-used and much-praised book on the European Union has been systematically revised and updated throughout. Amongst new material is a chapter on the Treaty of Nice and more extensive coverage of enlargement as well as analyses of changing and developing policy areas such as the Cotonou Agreement, the Lisbon process, and security and defence.
Lectures on Macroeconomics
Author:Stanley Fischer; Olivier J. Blanchard

Lectures on Macroeconomics provides the first comprehensive description and evaluation of macroeconomic theory in many years. While the authors' perspective is broad, they clearly state their assessment of what is important and what is not as they present the essence of macroeconomic theory today.

The main purpose of Lectures on Macroeconomics is to characterize and explain fluctuations in output, unemployment and movement in prices. The most important fact of modern economic history is persistent long term growth, but as the book makes clear, this growth is far from steady. The authors analyze and explore these fluctuations.

Topics include consumption and investment; the Overlapping Generations Model; money; multiple equilibria, bubbles, and stability; the role of nominal rigidities; competitive equilibrium business cycles, nominal rigidities and economic fluctuations, goods, labor and credit markets; and monetary and fiscal policy issues. Each of chapters 2 through 9 discusses models appropriate to the topic. Chapter 10 then draws on the previous chapters, asks which models are the workhorses of macroeconomics, and sets the models out in convenient form. A concluding chapter analyzes the goals of economic policy, monetary policy, fiscal policy, and dynamic inconsistency.

Written as a text for graduate students with some background in macroeconomics, statistics, and econometrics, Lectures on Macroeconomics also presents topics in a self contained way that makes it a suitable reference for professional economists.