Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/219027 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
DICE Discussion Paper No. 340
Publisher: 
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE), Düsseldorf
Abstract: 
This paper analyses the impact of common ownership on markups and innovation and adds to the discussion of the recently observed patterns of a long term rise in market power. We shed light on the inconclusiveness of results regarding the effects of common ownership on markups in the existing literature by exploiting industry technology classifications by the European Commission. Using a rich panel of European manufacturing firms from 2005 to 2016, we structurally infer markups and construct a measure of common ownership. Combining propensity score matching with a difference-in-differences estimator, we find an increase of firm markups by 3.1% after the first exposure tocommon ownership. While this effect is strongly pronounced in low-tech industries, we find no effect on markups in high-tech industries. In contrast, we measure a positive effect of common ownership on innovation activity in high-tech industries and no effectin low-tech industries. Both findings are consistent with recent theoretical findings in Lopéz and Vives (2019).
Subjects: 
Competition
Common Ownership
Market Power
Industry Structure
Antitrust
Innovation
JEL: 
L10
L41
L60
G23
G32
O34
ISBN: 
978-3-86304-339-1
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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