We examine whether Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), an external governance mechanism, stimulate cross-border mergers by protecting the property rights of foreign acquirers. Exploiting the staggered adoption and bilateral nature of the treaties, we find that BITs have a large positive effect...

Collaborative partnerships create interfirm linkages that potentially tie the fortunes of partnering firms to changing circumstances and decisions of each other. Yet not much is known about how firms in such partnerships are affected by their partners' post-formation decisions outside of...

This paper fills a gap in the existent literature on the determinants associated with the likelihood of being involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by insurance firms. We investigate firm factors for both becoming a target or becoming an acquirer using a detailed database of the Spanish...

We analyze a large merger in the Dutch banking market during the financial crisis using disaggregated data. Based on a merger simulation model, we evaluate merger-induced changes in the interest rates for savings accounts. We find that the merging banks decreased interest rates by 3 to 5 percent...

This paper employs a new approach to identify merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions financed by syndicated loans and provides evidence that acquirer announcement returns are higher in loan-financed M&A deals than in other deals. Utilizing an instrumental variable approach and a quasi-natural...

Fundamental innovation usually involves huge upfront costs, but the benefits are spread across various sectors of the economy. Given the large costs and limited appropriability of the benefits associated with fundamental innovations, individual firms underinvest in these innovations relative to...

This paper examines changes in acquirer and target companies' Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads as a proxy for default risk around official mergers and acquisitions (M&A) announce-ments. Related literature extensively documents wealth effects triggered by M&A from the shareholders' perspective,...

This paper assesses whether cross-border M&A decisions exhibit network effects. We estimate exponential random graph models (ERGM) and temporal exponential random graph models (TERGM) to evaluate the determinants of cross-country M&A investments at the sectoral level. The results show that...

We test the hypothesis that foreign direct investment promotes corporate governance spillovers in the host country. Using firm-level data from 64 countries during the period 2005-2014, we find that cross-border M&A activity is associated with subsequent improvements in the governance of...

We analyze why some merger and acquisitions (M&A) deals are withdrawn paying particular attention to the economic freedom and legal environment of countries. We use a large dataset based on deals worldwide from over 140 countries during the period 1977 to 2014. Our core finding is that the...