When Access Becomes Leverage: Dependency Capture, Public Subsidy, and Exit Externalization in Dependency-Bound Retail Markets

This methodological preprint develops a life-cycle review framework for evaluating when publicly supported retail development may convert local access gains into public vulnerability. The manuscript introduces two linked concepts: dependency capture, where residents, workers, and municipal actors become structurally dependent on a dominant retail firm’s continued presence; and exit externalization, where closure, relocation, service reduction, or withdrawal leaves residual public burdens such as vacancy, job loss, reduced access, longer travel, weakened local business capacity, and reliance on distant or platform-mediated substitutes.The paper does not argue that large-format retail, Walmart-style development, public incentives, or big-box entry are inherently harmful. Instead, it identifies a narrower conditional trajectory in which public subsidy, local redundancy loss, access centralization, labor dependency, municipal bargaining asymmetry, and post-exit residual harm appear together. The framework distinguishes this mechanism from ordinary competition, monopoly analysis, and nominal plurality/common-control problems. The manuscript is presented as a methodological preprint rather than an empirical verdict. It provides a bounded case-fit screen, separates case strength from evidentiary confidence, identifies falsification conditions, and outlines life-cycle review questions for future case collection, independent scoring, and cross-case validation. Its intended audiences include municipal planners, policy researchers, public-finance analysts, governance scholars, community development reviewers, and researchers studying retail concentration, public subsidy, access fragility, and post-exit externalities. Keywords: retail concentration; public subsidy; dependency capture; exit externalization; municipal bargaining; access monoculture; local displacement; big-box retail; economic development; public finance; life-cycle review; planning governance. Ψ(x) = ∇ϕ(Σ𝕒ₙ(x, ΔE)) + ℛ(x) ⊕ ΔΣ(𝕒′) — C077UPTF1L3 / CWCopeland Licensed CRHC v1.0