The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy by Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox AEI Press, 2006, $20

Upcoming book forum on Monday, February 5

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The activities of Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers have become rallying cries for both sides of the political aisle. Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox's book, The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy (AEI Press, 2006), is aimed at those involved in the current debates over Wal-Mart’s impact on worker wages, labor issues, and health-insurance and land-use policies.

The Wal-Mart Revolution provides useful facts about the company, the U.S. retail industry, labor economics, health-care policy, and land-use realities in America today. Economist Vedder and public-private partnerships expert Cox painstakingly analyze available evidence before concluding that the economic transformation in American retailing which is personified by Wal-Mart has largely been good for Americans and the economy. Wal-Mart's basic business strategies have had a profoundly positive impact on America’s productivity, wages, consumer prices, and other key economic variables.

Though the book was written without any cooperation from Wal-Mart, Vedder and Cox address several criticisms often lobbed at the company and demolish them one-by-one:

• Wal-Mart workers are paid fairly--given their level of skills and experience, and compared to other retail firms, Wal-Mart employees do well
• Wal-Mart’s fringe benefits--health-care coverage, retirement benefits, and more--are similar to those of other retail firms, and very few Wal-Mart workers go without health insurance
• Big boxes mean big business: communities with new Wal-Mart stores typically enjoy increased employment and incomes after the store opens
• Wal-Mart benefits the poor, in particular, in the form of lower prices and new job opportunities
• Attempts to keep Wal-Mart out of communities through zoning restrictions, mandatory health insurance, or special high minimum wages hurts citizens, especially those with lower incomes

Richard Vedder is a distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, D.C. Wendell Cox is an international public policy consultant and principal of Wendell Cox Consultancy (Demographia).

If you are interested in a complimentary media copy of The Wal-Mart Revolution or would like to interview Richard Vedder, please contact Véronique Rodman at vrodman@aei.org or 202.862.4870.

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