Using a data set of public procurement auctions and registered shareholders of all bidding firms in Singapore, we study the effects of ownership networks on prices and efficiency in product markets. We find participating bidders with common owners or common owners’ owners are more likely to submit identical bids, and the identical bids are associated with higher contract prices. Our structural estimates suggest removing ownership network effects improves a procurer’s cost efficiency. Our findings are robust to falsification tests, bid rounding concerns, placebo tests using other common stakeholder relationships, and weighting based on a machine-learning prediction of the auction format.

The Dodd-Frank Act shifted regulatory jurisdiction over “ midsize” investment advisers from the SEC to state-securities regulators. Client complaints against midsize advisers increased relative to those continuing under SEC oversight by 30 to 40 percent of the unconditional probability. Complaints increasingly cited fiduciary violations and rose more where state regulators had fewer resources. Advisers responding more to weaker oversight had past complaints, were located farther from regulators, faced less competition, had more conflicts of interest, and served primarily less-sophisticated clients. Our results inform optimal regulatory design in markets with informational asymmetries and search frictions.