"When helping the small hurts the middle": Beer excise duties and market concentration

Abstract

During the last decade the beer market has been in the focus of the media, largely because of spectacular mergers among the big players. The formation of Anheuser-Busch InBev created the world’s largest brewing company with a global market share of approximately 20%. This consolidation process in the beer market triggered substantial interest as to how concentrated the market will eventually become and its key driving forces.