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Has Anheuser-Busch Let The Steam Out Of Craft Beer? The Economics Of Acquiring Craft Brewers, Kenneth G. Elzinga, Alexander J. Mcglothlin
Has Anheuser-Busch Let The Steam Out Of Craft Beer? The Economics Of Acquiring Craft Brewers, Kenneth G. Elzinga, Alexander J. Mcglothlin
Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers
The craft beer segment in the U.S. has grown from a meager 20 brewers in the 1980s to over 7,000 today and is approaching a 15% market share. Macrobrewers initially responded by internal product differentiation but then began acquiring craft brewers, provoking concerns about the continuing viability of independent, local brewers. We analyze the economic consequences of the most prominent of these acquisitions: the Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) purchase of Goose Island in 2011. Using variation in pre-acquisition ABI market share to account for the effects of the distribution tier in the beer industry and the influence of macrobrewers on the …