Walmart and Big Box stores have different impact and people could give you different feedbacks regarding those stores. They sell yu cheap things and can let yoou save most of your money if you tend to buy on those stores.
The arrival of global retail chains in developing countries is causing a radical transformation in the way that households source their consumption.The richness of the microdata allows us to estimate a general expression for the gains from retail FDI, and to decompose these gains into several distinct channels.
Likewise, foreign retail entry causes large and significant welfare gains for the average household that are mainly driven by a reduction in the cost of living. In contrast, little evidence of significant changes in average municipality-level incomes or employment. Finally, the estimated gains are specific to foreign entry, rather than being driven by the entry of modern store formats more generally.
Several analysis provides a number of insights that relate to ongoing debates about developing country policies towards retail FDI. Policymakers may put too little weight on the potential for reductions in the cost of living that benefit the vast majority of households, both those who end up shopping at the foreign retail stores and those who enjoy price reductions at domestic retailers. Instead the focus is typically on the potentially adverse effects for an important, but nevertheless, select group of households working in the traditional retail sector.
There is little dispute that Wal-Mart's price reductions have benefited the 120 million American workers employed outside of the retail sector. Plausible estimates of the magnitude of the savings from Wal-Mart are enormous - a total of $263 billion in 2004, or $2,329 per household.2 Even if you grant that Wal-Mart hurts workers in the retail sector - and the evidence for this is far from clear - the magnitude of any potential harm is small in comparison.
Nobody at all is trying to say that Walmart, or big box stores, or even retail businesses in general, are entirely beneficial in all their effects.
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