"Has Wal-Mart Buried Mom and Pop?"

The first real statitical analysis of Wal-Mart's effects on small business can be found here. It was conducted by Russell S. Sobel and Andrea M. Dean, economics professors at West Virginia University.

The abstract states:

Saving traditional small ‘mom and pop’ businesses has been a justification for political and court decisions preventing Wal-Mart from opening new stores virtually everywhere across the United States. We present the first rigorous econometric investigation of how Wal-Mart actually impacts the small business sector. We examine the rate of self-employment and the number of small-employer establishments using both time-series and cross-sectional data. Contrary to popular belief, our results suggest that the process of creative destruction unleashed by Wal-Mart has had no statistically significant long-run impact on the overall size and profitability of the small business sector in the United States.

Great ammunition for debunking the anti-Wal-Marters myths.

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