Beefpacking underwent a dramatic transformation in the 1970s and 1980s, as plants got much larger and industry concentration rose dramatically. We use individual Census Bureau plant records to analyze the sources of the transformation. We find that there were modest but extensive scale economies...

We use establishment based panel data to estimate a cost function which identifies the role of scale economies in hog slaughter consolidation. We find modest but extensive technological scale economies in the 1990s, and they became more important over time. But wages rose sharply with plant size...