Ownership Friction Index (OFI): Irreversibility and Constraint Asymmetry in Asset Ownership

Assets are commonly evaluated through frameworks that emphasize risk, liquidity, and price dynamics. These approaches implicitly assume that ownership is a reversible financial position whose costs and benefits can be modeled probabilistically. This paper challenges that assumption by introducing the Ownership Friction Index (OFI) as an indexical analytical framework for examining ownership positions as structural conditions rather than market exposures. OFI does not measure liquidity, transaction costs, volatility, or risk. Instead, it examines the degree to which ownership positions impose non-neutrally reversible legal, regulatory, and reputational constraints that accumulate asymmetrically over time and narrow exit optionality independently of asset-level liquidity or price movement. By reframing ownership as a structurally binding condition, OFI explains why owners may become constrained even when markets appear favorable and why exit impairment may occur without price collapse.