Anticompetitive Effects of Common Ownership?

The 2018 ECGI Annual Member meeting featured a Focus Panel on "Common Ownership: Antitrust Meets Corporate Governance”. The research that triggered much of this debate has now been published in the Journal of Finance, (available here) : Azar, José and Schmalz, Martin C. and Tecu, Isabel "Anticompetitive Effects of Common Ownership” (Journal of Finance, Volume 73, Issue 4, Pages: 1513-1565, First Published: 25 May 2018). The publication includes a long internet appendix and a replication package. The package should make it possible for anyone with access to Thomson Reuters ownership data and a Stata licence to replicate the results of the paper.

Also last week, a paper with opposing findings (Dennis, Patrick J. and Gerardi, Kristopher and Schenone, Carola, Common Ownership Does Not Have Anti-Competitive Effects in the Airline Industry (February 5, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3063465 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3063465) was awarded the best conference paper prize at the European Finance Association annual meeting in Warsaw, a significant endorsement. The Prize Committee comprised of: Alex Edmans, London Business School and ECGI; Alexi Savov, NYU Stern; Laura Starks, The University of Texas at Austin and ECGI

ECGI will continue to track the debate via a dedicated common ownership page found here.