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Track M5-4: Boards, Governance, and Institutional Investors
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Presentations | ||
Do Board Connections between Product Market Peers Impede Competition? 1Washington University in St. Louis; 2National University of Singapore A firm's gross margin increases by 0.8 p.p. after forming a new direct board connection to a product market peer. Gross margin also rises by 0.4 p.p. after a connection is formed to a peer indirectly through a third intermediate firm. Further, using barcode-level data of 2.7 million products, we show that new board connections are related to higher consumer good prices and a greater tendency for market allocation. The effects are stronger when the newly connected peers share corporate customers or have similar business descriptions and hold when controlling for other inter-firm relationships.
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