Does Common Ownership Really Increase Firm Coordination?

A growing number of studies suggest that common ownership caused cooperation among firms to increase and competition to decrease. We take a closer look at four approaches used to identify these effects. We find that the effects that some studies have attributed to common ownership are caused by other factors, such as differential responses of firms (or industries) to the 2008 financial crisis. We propose a modification to one of the previously used empirical approaches that is less sensitive to these issues. Using this to re-evaluate the link between common ownership and firm outcomes, we find little robust evidence that common ownership affects firm behavior.

Keywords: common ownership, institutional investors, corporate governance

JEL Classification: G23, G32, G34, L22

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Lewellen, Katharina and Lowry, Michelle B., Does Common Ownership Really Increase Firm Coordination? (March 5, 2021). Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), Forthcoming, Tuck School of Business Working Paper No. 3336343, European Corporate Governance Institute – Finance Working Paper No. 741/2021, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3336343 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3336343