Mason Gaffney asked: > Can anyone point me to a modern economist who is ably rationalizing the > case > for small business today? Mason, the most prolific person in this area is David Audretsch (though he does not focus on distributed knowledge per se). Other modern economists working on the nature and economic impact of small enterprise include Simon Parker, Scott Shane, and Zoltan Acs. Check out recent issues of _Small Business Economics_, the _Journal of Business Venturing_, and _Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice_ for a sampling of current work on small and medium enterprises. (Don't expect many citations to Schumacher or Veblen, however!) Peter Klein