Makes you think twice about shopping at Wal-Mart. ( )

This is a fascinating book about a fascinating phase of capitalist history, and is an interesting antidote both to the luvvie new-economy out-of-posterior-blowing efforts such as Chris Anderson's The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More and the Stage 1 Pol-Sci anti-capitalist dreck which usually passes for informed criticism of the corporate sector in these enlightened times.

Whereas there may be some mileage in the contention that the internet has permanently pushed the threshold of viable business down the Long Tail - thereby creating a virtuous circle of more demand, more choice and more diversity of supply, here is a barnstorming tale of the organisation that seems single-handedly to scotch that argument. If there were much merit in Chris Anderson's general thesis, it would be hard to explain how, in such a transparently open and competitive market as the United States, one retailer - one *low margin* retailer - can have gone from a standing start to a 30% market share of almost any business it has cared to be in, in the last 30 years. For Wal-Mart is the very essence of the Fat Head, that part of the market which is supposed to be fraying and deteriorating before our very visual display units.

There is some mileage in the Long Tail, to be sure - for every Wal-Mart, there's an online-retailer-whose-name-shall-not-be-mentioned - and the truth no doubt lies somewhere in the middle. What is fascinating is how Wal-Mart's position as a monopsony (a buy-side monopoly, in other words) has stressed the economy and traditional business models in hitherto unforeseen and unanticipated ways, but has not troubled the carefully framed anitrust laws.

Fishman's account is balanced: he has a healthy respect for the brilliance of Wal-Mart's model, the unrelenting execution of its business plan, and the beneficial (and not always quantified) effects it has had on the US domestic economy in the last thirty or more years.

But he is no proselyte: for every success story like Makin' Bacon's, a well-managed, successful company has been sent to the (er...) Wall by the monosponist's relentless quest for reduced margin, and Fishman covers these stories - together with some altogether unnerving information about the Wal-Mart effect on the global consumption (and husbandry) of Salmon - in unflinching detail.

My hunch is that a true monopsony can't last as a natural state of equilibrium in a market so dynamic and competitive as America's, and Fishman's well developed argument is that, indeed, we may already be seeing the decline of the Walton empire, so perhaps the doomier passages of the book are overstated and in a decade we may wonder what all the fuss was about.

Nevertheless, for an incisive, economically literate, and well balanced book about the pros and cons of American style corporate capitalism (wildly superior to, for example, Joel Bakan's simple-minded The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power), this book comes well recommended. ( )

Wal-Mart isn't just the world's biggest company, it is probably the world's most written-about. But no book until this one has managed to penetrate its wall of silence or go beyond the usual polemics to analyze its actual effects on its customers, workers, and suppliers. Drawing on unprecedented interviews with former Wal-Mart executives and a wealth of staggering data (e.g., Americans spend $36 million an hour at Wal-Mart stores, and in 2004 its growth alone was bigger than the total revenue of 469 of the Fortune 500), The Wal-Mart Effect is an intimate look at a business that is dramatically reshaping our lives. ( )

Recensione di Fabio Ranchetti sul Corriere Economia

This is an eye opening book that describes how Wal-Mart has impacted our national economy both negatively and positively. It is an intersting look at the power that Wal-Mart wields not only in the United States, but increasingly around the world. ( )