Description:

Speaker: Hyein Cho
Title:  Vertical Integration and Endogenous Quality Choices: US Healthcare Industry

Speaker:  Fiona Kasperk
Title: Mavericks, Universal, and Common Owners - The Largest Shareholders of U.S. Public Firms

Abstract:
We construct a novel dataset covering all types of known owners of the largest U.S. public firms. Ownership structures are more heterogeneous across firms -- institutional investors are the largest owners less frequently and more firms are controlled by undiversified non-financial blockholders -- than previously believed. Common ownership within industry is more pronounced than implied by indexing, overturning previous research. One reason is that activist shareholders often hold passive financial interests in product market rivals; another is mergers of asset managers. These findings inform with facts a thus far largely theoretical policy debate related to the changing nature of ownership of U.S. firms.