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Overlapping ownership, endogenous quality, and welfare

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  • Brito, Duarte
  • Ribeiro, Ricardo
  • Vasconcelos, Helder

Abstract

This paper investigates how overlapping ownership affects quality levels, consumer surplus, firms’ profits and welfare when the industry is a vertically differentiated duopoly and quality choice is endogenous. This issue is particularly relevant since recent empirical evidence suggests that overlapping ownership constitutes an important feature of a multitude of vertically differentiated industries. We show that overlapping ownership, while detrimental for welfare, may increase or decrease the quality gap, consumer surplus and firms’ profits. In particular, when the overlapping ownership structure is such that the high quality firm places a positive weight on the low quality firm’s profits, the incentives of the high quality firm to compete aggressively reduce. This may increase the equilibrium quality of the low quality firm, which in turn may lead to higher consumer surplus, despite higher prices.

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  • Brito, Duarte & Ribeiro, Ricardo & Vasconcelos, Helder, 2020. "Overlapping ownership, endogenous quality, and welfare," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:190:y:2020:i:c:s0165176520300744
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109074
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    Cited by:

    1. Zormpas, Dimitrios & Ruble, Richard, 2021. "The dynamics of preemptive and follower investments with overlapping ownership," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    2. Ji Sun & Leonard F. S. Wang, 2023. "Vertical cross‐ownership, input price discrimination, and social welfare," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 19(2), pages 290-308, June.
    3. Lili Xu & Yidan Zhang & Sang‐Ho Lee, 2024. "Effects of partial passive ownership in a successive endogenous timing game with R&D spillovers," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(1), pages 283-297, January.
    4. Xingtang Wang & Leonard F. S. Wang, 2023. "Vertical shareholding, vertical product differentiation and social welfare," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(3), pages 478-494, July.
    5. Li, Youping & Zhang, Jianhu & Zhou, Zipeng, 2023. "Vertical differentiation with overlapping ownership," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    6. Leonardos, Stefanos & Petrakis, Emmanuel & Skartados, Panagiotis & Stamatopoulos, Giorgos, 2021. "Partial passive ownership holdings and licensing," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Overlapping ownership; Vertical differentiation;

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

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