This article investigates the motives for mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the U.S. meat products industry from 1977 to 1992. Results show that acquired meat and poultry plants were very productive before mergers, and that all but the very largest meat slaughter and processing plants and all...

This paper explores the evolution of the average wage of employees over the life-cycle of a manufacturing plant. The average wage starts out low for a new plant and increases along with labor productivity as the plant ages. As a plant approaches exit, its average wage falls, but more slowly than...

This article investigates the motives for mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the U.S. meat products industry from 1977 to 1992. Results show that acquired meat and poultry plants were very productive before mergers, and that all but the very largest meat slaughter and processing plants and all...

Processing plants in eight major food industries were highly productive before being acquired and they significantly improved their labor productivity afterward, Economic Research Service and U.S. Census Bureau researchers found in their analysis of Census data. The plant-level data on...

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on wages, employment, and plant closures in the meat packing, prepared meat products, and poultry slaughter and processing industries during two merger periods, 1977-1987 and 1982-1992. The analysis relies...

In this article we examine the type of establishment that experiences ownership change and how the transferred properties perform after acquisition. Our empirical work uses an unbalanced panel of 28,294 plants taken from the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD) for the period 1977-1987. We find...

Empirical analysis of mergers and acquisitions in eight important food industries suggests that workers in acquired plants realized modest increases in employment and wages relative to other workers. Results also show that mergers and acquisitions reduced the likelihood of plant closures while...

The link between information technology and productivity is clear. Yet how computers affect productivity is not well understood. Ours is the first study using data for approximately 30,000 U.S. manufacturing plants to examine the effect of computer networks on productivity. We find a positive...