We hand-collect and standardize information describing all 3,055 antitrust lawsuits brought by
the Department of Justice (DOJ) between 1971 and 2018. Using restricted establishment-level
microdata from the U.S. Census, we compare the economic outcomes of a non-tradable industry
in states targeted by DOJ antitrust lawsuits to outcomes of the same industry in other states that
were not targeted. We document that DOJ antitrust enforcement actions permanently increase
employment by 5.4% and business formation by 4.1%. Using an event-study design, we find (1) a
sharp increase in payroll that exceeds the increase in employment, meaning that DOJ antitrust
enforcement increases average wages, (2) an economically smaller increase in sales that is
statistically insignificant, and (3) a precise increase in the labor share. While we cannot separately
measure the quantity and price of output, the increase in production inputs (employment),
together with a proportionally smaller increase in sales, strongly suggests that these DOJ antitrust
enforcement actions increase the quantity of output and simultaneously decrease the price of
output. Our results show that government antitrust enforcement leads to persistently higher levels
of economic activity in targeted industries.