Value Creation, Market Power, and the Legitimacy of Entrepreneurial Wealth: A Critical-Case Analysis of Amazon and Jeff Bezos

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-825-2_24How to use a DOI?

Keywords

entrepreneurial wealth; Amazon; Jeff Bezos; critical case study; market power; labour monopsony; platform governance; economic rent

Abstract

Public debate about Jeff Bezos often treats innovation and exploitation as mutually exclusive explanations of extreme wealth. This study instead asks when entrepreneurial wealth remains connected to productive contribution and when it becomes partly sustained by market power. Amazon is examined as a theory-revealing critical case, not as a statistically representative firm. The study applies a claim-specific, 100-point evidence-appraisal protocol that weights directness (25 points), identification strength (30), scope fit (20), independence (15), and finality (10), with explicit rules for resolving conflicting evidence. It also operationalizes effective competition and viable alternatives through observable indicators of entry, switching, multi-homing, worker mobility, price or wage responses, and access to alternative channels. The evidence supports substantial value creation through e-commerce, logistics, and platform infrastructure, but it does not permit an estimate of the proportion of Bezos’s wealth attributable to innovation rather than economic rent. Amazon-specific labour studies identify algorithmic control and employment precarity across US and European warehouses, while county-level studies report both positive local outcomes and uneven distributional effects. Platform studies document several context-bounded channels of power, including entry into sellers’ product spaces, ranking advantages, private-label self-preferencing, and price responses after rival exit; however, the evidence is concentrated in particular marketplace functions, product categories, and regional settings and does not establish a universal mechanism across all Amazon markets. The case therefore supports a conditional boundary: entrepreneurial wealth becomes less defensible when returns are sustained by measurable restrictions on worker, seller, consumer, or rival alternatives without a corresponding productive contribution. External applicability is limited to founder-linked hybrid digital platforms that both govern and participate commercially in the same mediated market and display material user dependence.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Hanyu Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/10
TI  - Value Creation, Market Power, and the Legitimacy of Entrepreneurial Wealth: A Critical-Case Analysis of Amazon and Jeff Bezos
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Public Service, Economic Management and Sustainable Development (PESD 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 237
EP  - 248
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-825-2_24
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-825-2_24
ID  - Zhang2026
ER  -