Some scholars have argued that common ownership, which refers to an investor's simultaneous ownership of small stockholdings in several competing companies, is anticompetitive and prohibited by the U.S. antitrust laws. Proponents of this view target in particular large investment managers that...

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...

We study how overlapping ownership affects the timing and size of capacity investments in duopoly. In addition to standard accommodation and delay strategies, internalization allows a leader to block follower entry. Follower timing and capacity reactions are less aggressive, making outcomes less...

We present a mechanism based on managerial incentives through which common ownershipaffects product market outcomes. Firm-level variation in common ownership causes varia-tion in managerial incentives and productivity across firms, which leads to intra-industryand intra-firm cross-market...

Private equity firms (PE firms) have become common owners of established firms in concentrated markets. We show that the threat of a PE acquisition can trigger incumbent mergers in an otherwise mergerstable industry. This can help antitrust authorities maximize consumer surplus because...

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...

This paper studies the effect of common ownership on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We find that common ownership is positively associated with a firm's CSR score. The effect is stronger for firms in more competitive industries. We propose a two-stage duopoly game in which CSR serves as...

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...

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...