Wal-Marts are like tribbles

Just reading the news that a new Wal-Mart is slated for East Hills.. I am reminded of this video-graphic: "The Diffusion of Wal-Mark and the Economies of Density" (wmv file, but also there is a youtube version) put together by Thomas Holmes of the Economics Department at the University of Minnesota. Really worth watching.

Also I mentioned last year, Penn State's Stephan Goetz and Hema Swaminathan had a paper looking at the impact of Wal-mart on communities. Here is a press release on their article "Wal-Mart and County-Wide Poverty" in the June issue of Social Science Quarterly. There is an earlier verion of their paper available here.