Corporate market power has risen in recent decades, and new estimates in this note suggest that the likely wave of small and medium-sized enterprise bankruptcies from the ongoing pandemic will further strengthen market concentration. Whether and how policymakers should address this issue is...

We analyse the effects of monetary policy on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in the United States, both on the aggregate and the firm level. We find that aggregate M&A activity decreases significantly following a monetary policy shock. The aggregate results are confirmed by an analysis...

We analyse the effect of monetary policy on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity using transaction and balance sheet data of publicly listed U.S. companies. We find that an unexpected increase in interest rates significantly reduces M&A activity in the aggregate as well as on the firm level,...