Antitrust policies and profitability in nontradable sectors

Firms in tradable sectors are more likely to be subject to external competition to limit market power while non-tradable firms are more dependent on domestic policies and institutions. This paper combines an antitrust index available for multiple countries with firm-level data from Orbis covering more than 10 million firms from 90 countries, covering 20 sectors over 10 years and finds that profit margins of firms operating in non-tradable sectors are significantly lower in countries with stronger antitrust policies compared to firms operating in tradable sectors. The results are robust to a wide variety of empirical specifications.