Common Ownership: Divergence and Convergence between Research and the Public Policy Debate

By Martin Schmalz – 

A significant gap persists between the economic literature on common ownership and the legal and public-policy discussion of the associated antitrust problem. To illustrate this gap and ways to bridge it, this note offers examples of contributions to the debate that deviate from what is known in the literature. Contrary to much of the commentary, the recent debate was not triggered by new theories but rather by new empirical evidence, provided by more than two doz