We assess the consequences for consumers in 76 countries of multinational acquisitions in beer and spirits. Outcomes depend on how changes in ownership affect markups versus efficiency. We find that owner fixed effects contribute very little to the performance of brands. On average, foreign...

Wages for the vast majority of workers have stagnated since the 1980s while productivity has grown. We investigate two coexisting explanations based on rising market power: 1. Monopsony, where dominant firms exploit the limited mobility of their own workers to pay lower wages; and 2. Monopoly,...

By studying the interaction between social capital and decentralization, we show that political decentralization can be a source of divergence across heterogeneous regions. In particular, we claim that since the local endowments of social capital display their effect on the economy mainly...