Common ownership and competition in product markets

We investigate the relation between common institutional ownership of the firms in an industry and product market competition. We find that common ownership is neither robustly positively related with industry profitability or output prices nor is it robustly negatively related with measures of nonprice competition, as would be expected if common ownership reduces competition. This conclusion holds regardless of industry classification choice, common ownership measure, profitability measure, nonprice competition proxy, or model specification. Our point estimates are close to zero with tight bounds, rejecting even modestly sized economic effects. We conclude that antitrust restrictions seeking to limit intra-industry common ownership are not currently warranted. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The research findings indicate that common institutional ownership among firms in an industry does not significantly impact industry profitability, output prices, or nonprice competition. Therefore, antitrust restrictions on intra-industry common ownership are not deemed necessary at present.