ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 explored the ways in which the American public, guided by journalists, novelists, short story writers, movie makers, and other molders of general opinion viewed the rise to power of Standard Oil and Wal-Mart. In this chapter, the focus shifts to economists and the ways in which they, sometimes in collaboration with lawyers, have explained the rise of big business. Both the traditions of economic analysis and growing public concern about business giants meant that economists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had little choice; they had to confront the growing clout of Standard Oil and the railroads. In more recent times, recurrence of worry about skewedness of income distribution in a land that prides itself on equality of opportunity has also forced the attention of at least some economists to the questions raised by public reaction to WalMart.
