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Ownership Networks and Bid Rigging

Kentaro Asai & Ben Charoenwong

Review of Corporate Finance Studies2026https://doi.org/10.1093/rcfs/cfag002article
AJG 3ABDC A*
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

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.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/rcfs/cfag002

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@article{kentaro2026,
  title        = {{Ownership Networks and Bid Rigging}},
  author       = {Kentaro Asai & Ben Charoenwong},
  journal      = {Review of Corporate Finance Studies},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/rcfs/cfag002},
}

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Ownership Networks and Bid Rigging

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.