Anticompetitive Effects of Common Ownership PDF Download
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Author: José Azar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 79
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Book Description
Many natural competitors are jointly held by a small set of large institutional investors. In the US airline industry, taking common ownership into account implies increases in market concentration that are 10 times larger than what is “presumed likely to enhance market power” by antitrust authorities. Within-route changes in common ownership robustly correlate with route-level changes in ticket prices, even when we only use variation in ownership due to the combination of two large asset managers. We conclude that a hidden social cost - reduced product market competition - accompanies the private benefits of diversification and good governance.
Author: José Azar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 79
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Book Description
Many natural competitors are jointly held by a small set of large institutional investors. In the US airline industry, taking common ownership into account implies increases in market concentration that are 10 times larger than what is “presumed likely to enhance market power” by antitrust authorities. Within-route changes in common ownership robustly correlate with route-level changes in ticket prices, even when we only use variation in ownership due to the combination of two large asset managers. We conclude that a hidden social cost - reduced product market competition - accompanies the private benefits of diversification and good governance.
Author: José Azar (College teacher)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antitrust law
Languages : en
Pages : 50
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Book Description
We use data from the U.S. airline industry to test the hypothesis, consistent with the general equilibrium oligopoly model of Azar and Vives (2021), that inter-industry common ownership should be associated with lower prices in product markets. We find that, as the model predicts, increases over time in intra-industry common ownership are associated with higher prices, while increases in inter-industry common ownership are associated with lower prices. The aggregate effect is nil. We also find that common ownership by the "Big Three" (BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street) is associated with lower airline prices, while common ownership by shareholders other than the Big Three is associated with higher prices. The results highlight the limitations of partial equilibrium oligopoly theory in the context of common ownership, and the need to consider a general equilibrium perspective.
Author: José Azar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 8
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Book Description
Kennedy, O'Brien, Song, and Waehrer (2017) replicate the panel results of Azar, Schmalz and Tecu (forthcoming), but argue on theoretical grounds that the estimates should not be interpreted as anti-competitive effects of common ownership. They then develop and estimate alternative models and find no significant positive effects of common ownership on airline ticket prices. This note points out features of their empirical analysis that cast doubt on the reliability of their method and results. Their conclusion that the data do not support AST's interpretation seems unwarranted.
Author: José Azar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 25
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Book Description
This internet appendix complements the paper "Anticompetitive Effects of Common Ownership" and is organized as follows: Section I outlines a model of competition under common ownership that yields the network density measure of common ownership concentration we use in the empirical analysis. The data appendix in section II provides details on data set construction and variable definitions. Section III contains robustness checks and provides additional results described in the main paper.
Author: José Azar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
We show that the main claim in Dennis, Gerardi, and Schenone (JF forthcoming) (DGS), namely "that the documented positive correlation between common ownership and ticket prices stems from the market share component of the common ownership measure, and not the ownership and control components," is factually incorrect. In particular, we show empirically that the placebo that according to DGS "keeps market shares fixed" is in fact highly negatively correlated with market shares. This correlation is mechanical and arises because the data set is an unbalanced panel, as we show analytically. We make a methodological contribution to the literature by showing how one can actually separate variation from market shares from variation in ownership. Contrary to DGS' claims, ownership changes do predict price changes once one constructs a valid placebo that actually separates the variation from market shares from the variation in ownership. AST's panel regressions in fact underestimated the price effect of common ownership, due to the endogeneity of market shares.
Author: Patrick Dennis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Institutional investors often own significant equity in firms that compete in the same product market. These "common owners" may have an incentive to coordinate the actions of firms that would otherwise be competing rivals, leading to anti-competitive pricing. This paper uses data on airline ticket prices to test whether common owners induce anti-competitive pricing behavior. We find little evidence to support such a hypothesis, and show that the positive relationship between average ticket prices and a commonly used measure of common ownership previously documented in the literature is generated by the endogenous market share component, rather than the ownership component, of the measure.
Author: José Azar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 8
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Book Description
The share of stocks beneficially owned by institutional investors has increased substantially over the last three decades. Together with a high and increasing level of concentration in the asset management industry, this trend implies that a small number of institutional investors now constitute the largest shareholders of most publicly traded firms in the U.S. and in other developed economies. When the same set of investors owns most firms, they are bound to own several firms in the same industry. Such overlapping ownership interests among competitors, or “common ownership,” may imply a reduction in firms' incentives to compete, compared to a situation in which competitors are controlled by separate sets of investors, and may thus create antitrust risks. Recent empirical research shows evidence for such anti-competitive effects of common ownership. These findings have since ignited a debate on the antitrust risk posed by institutional investors, its legal implications and potential solutions. This article first illustrates the extent of present-day common ownership and discusses the economic logic of why common ownership leads to reduced incentives to compete and may cause anti-competitive outcomes. We then review some of the empirical evidence to date, discuss critiques of the same and explain the conceptual problems inherent with all potential policy solutions. The legal debate around these findings is discussed by a fast-growing literature, including contributions by other authors in this issue.
Author: Edward B. Rock
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
With the growth of common ownership and investor engagement with portfolio firms, the possibility of adverse competitive effects of common ownership has become an important issue. To date, most of the focus has been on “unilateral” effects. In this Article, we shift the focus to the potential “coordinated” effects of common ownership and the appropriate antitrust treatment. After examining the ways in which a common owner could be a particularly effective cartel facilitator, we identify five scenarios, based on antitrust case law and enforcement experience, in which common ownership could plausibly increase the potential for coordinated conduct in concentrated markets. For each, we provide an economic analysis of the potential anticompetitive coordinated effects and we consider the appropriate legal treatment under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The five scenarios are: Common Owners as Cartel Initiators; Common Owners as Trustworthy Conduits; a Common Compensation Structure as a Facilitating Practice; Common Owners as Brakes; and Common Owners as Vectors of Infection. We then turn to whether and how the anticompetitive potential for coordinated effects of common ownership might affect merger analysis under Section 7 of the Clayton Act or the EU Merger Regulation.
Author: José Azar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 12
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Book Description
Dennis, Gerardi, and Schenone (2017) (DGS) claim to replicate the data construction and results of Azar, Schmalz, and Tecu (forthcoming) (AST). While their implementation of the main specifications in AST generates qualitatively similar results, they claim that AST's baseline results are driven 1) by the use of passenger volume as regression weights and 2) largely by the top fifth percentile of markets in the passenger count distribution.In this note, we show that these claims are factually incorrect. First, because DGS do not in fact replicate the data construction described in AST, their paper is of limited usefulness in showing the effect of deviations from AST's empirical specifications. Second, we show that AST's results are qualitatively robust to not weighting regressions. Third, AST's results also hold on subsamples excluding the top fifth percentile of markets by passenger count. Additional evidence we present in this note suggests that DGS's erroneous conclusions are driven by an incorrect treatment of ownership data as well as other differences in their sample's characteristics compared to AST's.
Author: Menesh S. Patel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 59
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Book Description
Recent empirical studies demonstrate the significant extent to which a small number of well-known institutional investors have taken on large ownership interests in the majority of large U.S. public companies, including large ownership interests in horizontal competitors. The response to these studies has been dramatic, with calls for significant overhauls of antitrust policy and institutional shareholding due to common ownership's potential anticompetitive effects. Yet, this article argues, it is important to first appreciate a number of consequential complexities before any such changes occur. The article shows that while common ownership can harm competition as a theoretical matter, whether and the extent to which common ownership will actually generate competitive harm in a given market depends on numerous factors, such as the nature and extent of common ownership in the relevant market, the structure of the market, shareholder incentives, and managerial objectives. For that reason, the mere fact that institutional investors' significant equity holdings generate high levels of common ownership by itself is insufficient to conclude that this common ownership results in substantial competitive harm in a given market. The article's second contribution is a set of modest, but important, policy proposals that flow directly from the paper's core finding that there is no unequivocal answer to whether common ownership in a particular market will generate substantial competitive harm. Most important, rather than restrictions on common ownership or widespread antitrust investigation, or safe harbors or presumptions of legality, common ownership should continue to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
