Are we kidding ourselves on competition?
[Commentary] The traditional textbook model of competition in an oligopoly goes likes this. Firms choose prices and other variables (like product quality, advertising and R&D) to maximise their own profits and disregard the impact of their actions on (a) competing firms and (b) consumers; although with the latter since they want them to buy products they aren’t completely immune to their welfare. This model is essentially unquestioned but, in reality, it relies on a view of firm ownership that is markedly different from corporate reality. In particular, large firms are owned by shareholders (who may also be their consumers) but, more importantly, may be the shareholders of their competitors as well. So ask yourself: when those shareholders vote on the composition of boards or the management of the firm, or, importantly how the management of the firm is compensated, are they going to vote for managers who will care only about the profits of the firm they manage or about the profits more broadly? The answer is obvious: they will look to managers who manage in the interest of shareholders and so that means they care about all firm profits and not just the one of their own firm.
To see how that might arise, think about, oh I don’t know, Comcast and Time Warner. These are cable companies/Internet service providers who are the largest of their kind in the US. I suspect that there is lots of cross ownership of mutual funds of each of these. Why? Because they happen to each focus on different regions in the US and so any mutual fund worth their salt would want to diversify their portfolio to hedge geographic risk. And so ask yourself: how readily would the boards of those companies improve massive infrastructure investments to expand the reach of their networks into the territory of the other? With cross-ownership, they wouldn’t have a powerful incentive.
Are we kidding ourselves on competition?