"This paper examines the impact of mergers on default risk, finding that, on average, a merger increases the default … prior to a merger announcement. We also demonstrate higher levels of default risk are not accompanied by higher post- merger …

exact amount of cost efficiency/inefficiency that will result from the merger. Nevertheless, the key element of the model is … always have incentives to merge, irrespective of cost uncertainty, while a merger without role redistribution is ex ante … merger between leaders always enhances welfare if participants have incentives to merge, such that private and collective …