This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 21st, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

Walmart is now a mainstay in small town America, but at what cost to local economies.

The economist Russ Sobel is co-author of an article in the new issue of Regulation magazine

examining the impact of Walmart stores on local businesses,

as Walmart buried mom and pop.

It makes a certain intuitive sense that Walmart coming into a small town would put small locally owned businesses out of business.

Walmart is renowned for its ability to manage supply chains in a way that mom and pop couldn't possibly

compete.

What has your research found?

Well, I tell you what, what we focused on on our research, we're trying to overcome some of the problems with the previous studies.

One of the biggest ones that we were really trying to overcome, and let me try to put it in a real hometown kind of example for you

is that here in morguetown west virginia

uh... when walmart came to town

uh... you know there was quite a lot of you know quite a few uh... businesses in our

downtown who uh... ended up going out of

business is a result

uh... and you know with the previous studies can count up the number of those but

what they failed to take into account is now you know after the passage of five years

every one of those store fronts is full again it's just with different kinds of new

small businesses

so for example we used to have a uh... uh... uh... uh... clothing store down there that's now turned into a fancy restaurant.

We had another that sold toiletries and stuff that's turned into an antique store.

...