Measuring Common Ownership: An Axiomatic Approach

Thomas Gehrig and Klaus Ritzberger

No 22057, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper proposes three basic axioms for measuring common ownership based purely on the ownership distributions: symmetry, normalization, and orthogonality. Combining a fourth, structural axiom with normalization yields a characterization of cosine similarity as the only commonality measure that satisfies all axioms. The paper also discusses how the basic axioms relate to measures of common ownership used in empirical research.

Keywords: Common ownership; Ownership concentration; Cosine-similarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C43 D63 G34 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10
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