From Beer To Airlines, Corporate Consolidation Is All Around Us
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If you go to your local liquor store or beer cellar, it may seem like you have thousands of options. And there\\u2019s certainly a lot of beer on the shelves. Not just Michelob or Miller Lite, but smaller-batch brews with names like Spitting Hobo or Dead Dragon. But though there might be a huge number of beer varieties, the American beer industry is mostly controlled by a handful of breweries that control nearly 90 percent of the American beer market. And this consolidation isn\\u2019t only a story of beer. The biggest four U.S. airlines reap 65 percent of the industry\\u2019s revenue, compared to ten years ago, when they only took in 41 percent. To find out more about why corporations are getting more powerful, we talked with David Wessel, a senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution, and author of the recent Harvard Business Review article, \\u201cIs Lack of Competition Strangling the U.S. Economy?\\u201d
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