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PhD Candidate in Economics California Institute of Technology

This paper introduces a novel empirical framework to assess the impact of ownership consolidation on labor markets, addressing growing concerns about labor market power. I develop a two-sided matching model tailored to the creative labor force, a segment characterized by strong worker-firm compatibility. Applying this model to a major merger in the US publishing industry, I leverage rich text data to analyze its effects on the author labor market. Counterfactual merger simulations reveal a trade-off between efficiency gains, creative misalignment, and redistributive effects. Although the merger alleviated capacity constraints, post-merger integration resulted in significant creative misalignment between authors and publishers. The merger also
triggered substantial value transfers from competing publishers and authors to the merged entity, with established authors bearing the heaviest losses. Notably, the merger’s anticompetitive effects manifested primarily in labor markets rather than consumer markets. This research extends merger evaluation beyond consumer impact, providing a framework for analyzing the broader consequences of mergers on labor markets characterized by worker-firm complementarities.