This dataset aims to provide additional evidence of the effects of government intervention on productivity by studying the impact of the abolition of the Net Book Agreement (NBA) in the UK in the mid 1990s. The dataset uses the UK book industry pre-abolition as a comparator to UK performance post-abolition. It also compares the UK book market to the German book market, which - like several other European countries - continue to maintain fixed book price systems. The principal data used to compute productivity was obtained from the database: AMADEUS. This provides financial information for approximately nine million public and private companies across Europe. Attention was restricted to book retailers and publishers with five or more employees (although data was often not available for firms this small). The ESRC Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) undertakes interdisciplinary research into competition policy and regulation that has real-world policy relevance without compromising academic rigour. It prides itself on the interdisciplinary nature of the research and the members are drawn from a range of disciplines, including economics, law, business and political science. The Centre was established in September 2004, building on the pre-existing Centre for Competition and Regulation (CCR), with a grant from the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council). It currently boasts a total of 26 faculty members (including the Director and a Political Science Mentor), 4 full- and part-time researchers and 23 PhD students.

Compilation and synthesis of data from various sources. Principal data to compute productivity was obtained from the database AMADEUS, which provides financial information for approximately nine million public and private companies across Europe. Attention was restricted to firms with five or more employees (although data was often not available for firms this small). This was combined with supplementary industry sources. For the UK information on the main players from market research reports such as Verdict (2007) and Mintel (2007) combined with AMADEUS descriptions of firms' activities and company websites was sufficient. For Germany in addition to searching entries by NACE code lists of the top 100 publishers and the top 50 retailers were available from http://www.buchreport.de/. References: Mintel, (2007), Books, Market Intelligence. Verdict, (2007), UK Book Retailing 2007.