Competitive effects of cross-ownership in the Norwegian publishing industry

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the growing literature on competitive effects of overlapping ownership. Overlapping ownership means that competing firms have ownership in each other, this is known as cross-ownership, or are partially owned by a common investor or set of investors, known as common ownership. In this thesis, I focus on the former in the Norwegian publishing industry. The publishing industry is fairly concentrated, with four big firms generating more than 80 percent of the total revenues. Some of these firms have had varying degrees of partial ownership in smaller rival firms throughout the period. The industry is also characterized by a fixed price system, and a large extent of vertical integration. The analysis is based on a time series consisting of annual data over a 13-year period. I explore the price effects of changes in cross-ownership. According to the Norwegian Law of Competition, partial acquisitions which harm competition are prohibited. However, I do not find evidence that increases in cross-ownership has led to higher prices in the industry. Based on this analysis, increases in cross-ownership has not had anticompetitive effects in the publishing market. I do however believe that further analyses should be done, and I show how I would recommend conducting them in a panel data example.MasteroppgaveECON391MASV-SØKPROF-SØ