Merger Effects and Antitrust Enforcement: Evidence from US Consumer Packaged Goods

The first version of this paper was circulated with the title “Have Mergers Raised Prices? Evidence from US Retail.” We are grateful to Daniel Ackerberg, Matt Backus, Christoph Carnehl, José Ignacio Cuesta, Jan De Loecker, Jan Eeckhout, Francisco Garrido, Igal Hendel, Daniel Hosken, Francine Lafontaine, Alex MacKay, Ioana Marinescu, Stephen Martin, Joe Mazur, Nate Miller, Aviv Nevo, Ariel Pakes, Rob Porter, Mar Reguant, Bill Rogerson, Nancy Rose, Andrew Sweeting, Frank Verboven, Mike Vita, Mike Whinston, and Ali Yurukoglu for useful feedback. John Asker, Josh Feng, Gabrielle Rovigatti, and Matthew Weinberg provided helpful discussions. Avner Kreps and JD Salas provided excellent research assistance, as did Aisling Chen, Rosario Cisternas, Marina Siqueira, and Yintian Zhang. We are also grateful for help from Aaron Banks, Katherine Daehler, Ethan Nourbash, Nathan Friedle, Denis Gribenica, Tianshi Wang, and numerous other research assistants. This project was funded by grants from the Center for Equitable Growth and the National Science Foundation (SES-2116934). Researcher(s) own analyses calculated (or derived) based in part on data from Nielsen Consumer LLC and marketing databases provided through the NielsenIQ Datasets at the Kilts Center for Marketing Data Center at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The conclusions drawn from the NielsenIQ data are those of the researcher(s) and do not reflect the views of NielsenIQ. NielsenIQ is not responsible for, had no role in, and was not involved in analyzing and preparing the results reported herein. All errors are our own.

• data appendix

• April 5, 2023
• December 19, 2023
• June 4, 2024