The common ownership debate has become one of the most contentious issues in corporate law today. This debate is a by-product of major changes to capital market ownership structure, which have triggered concerns about the rise of institutional investors, the growth of index investing, and the...

Horizontal shareholdings exist when a common set of investors own significant shares in corporations that are horizontal competitors in a product market. Economic models show that substantial horizontal shareholdings are likely to anticompetitively raise prices when the owned businesses compete...

Scholars and antitrust enforcers have raised concerns about anticompetitive effects that may arise when institutional investors hold substantial stakes in competing firms. Their concern rests on empirical evidence that such common concentrated ownership is associated with higher prices and lower...

Minority shareholdings have been on the regulatory agenda of competition authorities for some time. Recent empirical studies, however, draw attention to a new, thought provoking theory of harm: common ownership by institutional investors holding small, parallel equity positions in several...

A phenomenon known as “Common Ownership” arises when shareholders hold substantial stakes in competing firms. Although recent empirical evidence has illustrated how common concentrated owners are associated with higher product market prices and lower output, scholars remain divided as to the...

Starting with the pioneering work of Azar, Schmalz, and Tecu (2018), a rapidly growing body of empirical evidence on the effect of common ownership on market outcomes has emerged. However, testing the robustness of these results to alternative methods and data sources is just beginning. In this...

We focus on firms that chronically underperform and evaluate ways that institutional investors can facilitate the redeployment of assets to higher valued uses. Our evidence indicates that institutional holdings affect firm survival. Increases in institutional holdings are associated with...

We analyze horizontal mergers when the acquirer holds a passive partial ownership stake (PPO) in the target firm prior to the merger. We show that a PPO reduces the minimal synergy level necessary to make a merger beneficial for consumers. It follows that an antitrust authority ignoring existing...

This paper considers cost-reducing R&D investment with spillovers in a Cournot oligopoly with minority shareholdings. We find that, with high market concentration and sufficiently convex demand, there is no scope for cross-ownership to improve welfare regardless of spillover levels. Otherwise,...