| Abstract: | Earlier papers reach conflicting conclusions about the effect of concentration in the US brewing industry. This paper argues that stock market data on a more recent set of events, the intense merger activity of 1981–2, can help to resolve these differences. The results indicate that mergers between brewers, excluding the two industry leaders (Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing), enhance industry performance by enabling smaller brewers to exploit the scale economies enjoyed by the large ones. |
