We examine the influence of common ownership on commonalities in the information environment. Specifically, we study commonalities in financial statements and in the actions of key agents such as financial analysts and firm managers who contribute and respond to the information environment....

We derive a measure that captures the extent to which common ownership shifts managers' incentives to internalize externalities. A key feature of the measure is that it allows for the possibility that not all investors are attentive to whether a manager's actions benefit the investor's overall...

Conventional wisdom is that diversification weakens governance by spreading an investor too thinly. We show that, when an investor owns multiple firms ("common ownership"), governance through both voice and exit can strengthen -- even if the firms are in unrelated industries. Under common...

This paper develops a unified theory of blockholder governance and the voting premium. It explains how and why a voting premium emerges in the absence of takeovers and controlling shareholders. The model features a minority blockholder and dispersed shareholders who trade shares in a competitive...

We explore how financial market trading shapes the ownership structure of industry rivals. In equilibrium, only a fraction of identical investors acquires positions in all firms (common owners). Investors’ ability to influence competition generates: (i) either strategic complementarity or...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of blockholders (large shareholders) in corporate governance. We start with the underlying property rights of public corporations; we discuss how blockholders are critical in addressing free-rider problems and why, like...

The purpose of this research is to determine whether firm-specific factors influence Small and Medium Enterprises’ (SMEs) ability to access finance. To address the study objectives, data from a sample of 103 SMEs was used in the study. Using multiple regression analysis, we found that, firm...

This paper presents an empirical test of the anticompetitive effects of joint ownership, by examining the operation of three nuclear plants in Sweden. Since maintenance is the main conduit explaining the variation in output, I formulate a model of intertemporal choice in which firms choose how...

This study investigates how dominant business groups affect investment decisions of other standalone firms in the economy. Using intra-group equity transactions within the top 40 largest business groups in Korea, this study finds that high levels of internal capital allocation within the groups...

In this paper we test both sunk cost and strategic size liability predictions by looking at the exit behavior of a sample of Italian manufacturing plants. For this purpose, we focus on plants' size and ownership status. In particular, we distinguish independent plants from plants that belong to...