Cross-ownership and common ownership have gained more attention since
the Millennium. It has been shown that the effects of cross ownership can be
incorporated into standard game theoretical models, altering the traditional
concentration measures and hence also the relationship between concentration
and profitability. Empirical research on the effect of cross ownership on concentration
is limited. This paper compares the traditional concentration index with the
one modified for cross-ownership in the Finnish newspaper publishing industry, which
is characterized by cross-ownership that should be reflected in the modified
empirical concentration measures. With a dataset that covers all daily newspaper
publishers between years 1950 and 2016 we show that this is indeed the case.
Elaborating on the implications for industry concentration and profitability,
we observe that the modified concentration indexes show a higher/lower
correlation with the profitability in Finnish newspaper industry