Horizontal Shareholding

The Economic Costs of Common Ownership

A new empirical study attempts to estimate the economy-wide welfare costs of common ownership. The authors find that they are large and...

Horizontal Shareholding’s Anticompetitive Effects and the Mechanisms That Produce It

Waiting for further proof of causal mechanisms before addressing the anticompetitive harm caused by horizontal shareholding is unjustified, just as it was when people...

The Greatest Anticompetitive Threat of Our Time: Fixing the Horizontal Shareholding Problem

Undisputed empirical studies confirm that horizontal shareholding poses a great anticompetitive threat. What can antitrust enforcers do about it? Quite a lot, in fact.     Editors'...

Firms with Owners in Common Are Freer about Publicly Disclosing Information

The accounting literature has long examined how public disclosures relate to firm competitiveness. If common ownership is in fact hurting competition, companies with owners...

New Evidence and Legal Theories About Horizontal Shareholding

Harvard Law School professor Einer Elhauge on his new paper on horizontal shareholding, which provides new empirical evidence that even when horizontal shareholders individually...

The Anti-Competitive Effects of Common Ownership: Q&A with Martin Schmalz

Martin Schmalz, assistant professor of business administration and finance at the University of Michigan, speaks about the anti-competitive effects of common ownership, a situation in...

The ProMarket Monthly Roundup

The first edition of our monthly roundup that includes ProMarket posts from the previous month, as well as interesting stories from our “Weekly Briefing” section. The...

LATEST NEWS

Why Have Uninsured Depositors Become De Facto Insured?

Due to a change in how the FDIC resolves failed banks, uninsured deposits have become de facto insured. Not only is this dangerous for risk in the banking system, it is not what Congress intends the FDIC to do, writes Michael Ohlrogge.

Merger Law Reaches Acquirer Incentives and Private Equity Strategies

Steven C. Salop argues that Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers in which the acquiring firm’s unilateral incentives and business strategy are likely to lessen market competition.

Tim Wu Responds to Letter by Former Agency Chief Economists

Former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy Tim Wu responds to the November 27 letter signed by former chief economists at the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department Antitrust Division calling for a separation of the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines.

Can the Public Moderate Social Media?

ProMarket student editor Surya Gowda reviews the arguments made by Paul Gowder in his new book, The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms.

Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy

In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.