National Agricultural Library

Mergers and acquisitions, employment, wages, and plant closures in the U.S. meat product industries

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 on two balanced panel datasets of all plants owned by meat and poultry firms that existed in the 1977 Census of Manufacturing and survived until 1987 and another dataset of plants that existed in 1982 and survived until 1992. We find that (a) M&As are positively associated with wages in the meat packing and prepared meat products industries during 1977-1987, but not during 1982-1992; (b) changes in employment are positively related to M&As in all three meat and poultry industries during 1977-1987, but only in the poultry industry during 1982-1992; and (c) M&As are generally negatively associated with plant closures.

Agribusiness

Volume 25, Number 1

pp. 70-89