“Common ownership,” the case of investors owning shares in more than one company–specifically, in shares of companies that compete in the same industry–is currently a hot topic in the antitrust arena. In particular, the alleged effects of common ownership on industry competition are receiving a lot of attention.
Einer Elhague, in the Harvard Law Review, proclaimed “[a]n economic blockbuster has recently been exposed.” Eric Posner, Fiona Scott Morton and Glen Weyl, in the Antitrust Law Journal, assert that “the concentration of markets through large institutional investors is the major new antitrust challenge of our time.” These claims are based on a handful of empirical studies claiming to have identified a causal relationship between the degree of common ownership and such competitive yardsticks as airline prices, banking fees, executive compensation, and even corporate disclosure patterns.
Of course, such a blockbuster antitrust challenge deserves an aggressive policy response, ideas for which both Elhague and Posner, et al., are more than happy to provide.
However, it’s not so clear that the problem is as big as suggested–if it exists at all. It’s also not clear that the proposed policy solutions would make anyone better off (except perhaps antitrust law “experts”)–and could possibly make many people worse off.
Thom Lambert and I recently posted a new paper that takes on both the claims of a major problem and the proposed solutions. In The Case for Doing Nothing About Institutional Investors’ Common Ownership of Small Stakes in Competing Firms, we explain the problems with the problem itself–both the theoretical logic and the empirical evidence–and the problems with the proposed policy responses. Over the next several days we’re going to unpack those arguments over at Truth on the Market. Thom already made the introductory post that goes into a bit more detail on the issue.
If you’re interested, I encourage you to click over to TOTM and read the posts there. Once we’re done, I’ll post a summary and set of links to each of them here. For now, the abstract of our paper is available below:
Recent empirical research purports to demonstrate that institutional investors’ “commonownership” of small stakes in competing firms causes those firms to compete less aggressively, injuring consumers. A number of prominent antitrust scholars have cited this research as grounds for limiting the degree to which institutional investors may hold stakes in multiple firms that compete in any concentrated market. This Article contends that the purported competitive problem is overblown and that the proposed solutions would reduce overall social welfare.
With respect to the purported problem, we show that the theory of anticompetitive harm from institutional investors’ commonownership is implausible and that the empirical studies supporting the theory are methodologically unsound. The theory fails to account for the fact that intra-industry diversified institutional investors are also inter-industry diversified and rests upon unrealistic assumptions about managerial decision-making. The empirical studies purporting to demonstrate anticompetitive harm from commonownership are deficient because they inaccurately assess institutional investors’ economic interests and employ an endogenous measure that precludes causal inferences.
Even if institutional investors’ commonownership of competing firms did soften market competition somewhat, the proposed policy solutions would themselves create welfare losses that would overwhelm any social benefits they secured. The proposed policy solutions would create tremendous new decision costs for business planners and adjudicators and would raise error costs by eliminating welfare-enhancing investment options and/or exacerbating corporate agency costs.
In light of these problems with the purported problem and shortcomings of the proposed solutions, the optimal regulatory approach — at least, on the current empirical record — is to do nothing about institutional investors’ commonownership of small stakes in competing firms.