Note on Democracy and Competition: The Role of Ownership Structure in a General Equilibrium Model with Vertical Preferences

Abstract

This note extends the results already obtained by Khaloul et al. (2017) on the majority vote between monopoly and duopoly by a heterogeneous population composed of individuals who are potentially consumers, workers, and shareholders to the general case where firms are owned by a given proportion of the population. Results show that duopoly is preferred when non-shareholders constitute a majority of the population. Otherwise, the majority vote depends on the relative dispersion of the individuals with respect to their intensity of preference for quality and their sensitivity to effort.