Common Ownership around the World

We study common ownership in 49 countries from 2005 to 2023, covering economies that account for 86% of global GDP. Common ownership is pervasive and rising around the world: average pairwise implied profit weights (κ) more than doubled in the median country over our sample period and more than tripled in the United States. Common ownership exhibits a steep size gradient—highest among the largest firms and rising fastest at the top of the firm size distribution—a pattern we observe consistently across all countries and regions. We show that the rise of common ownership stems not just from more institutional investment but from its increasing concentration among a few megaproviders of capital such as the Big Three (BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street). Even outside the United States, where non-Big Three investors remain important, the Big Three account for the largest share of the increase in common ownership in most countries. We also investigate how common ownership is related to legal, institutional, and market characteristics such as investor protection laws, competition laws, mandatory ESG disclosure, and labor market frictions across firms and countries. Our results are generally robust to replacing the one-share-one-vote assumption with control rights measured from dual-class share structures and ownership chains.