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Human capital relatedness and mergers and acquisitions

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  • Lee, Kyeong Hun
  • Mauer, David C.
  • Xu, Emma Qianying

Abstract

We construct a measure of the pairwise relatedness of firms’ human capital to examine whether human capital relatedness is a key factor in mergers and acquisitions. We find that mergers are more likely and merger returns and postmerger performance are higher when firms have related human capital. These relations are stronger or only present in acquisitions where the merging firms do not operate in the same industries or product markets. Reductions in employment and wages following mergers with high human capital relatedness suggest that the merged firm has greater ability to layoff low quality and/or duplicate employees and reduce labor costs. We further show in a falsification test that human capital relatedness has no effect on acquiring firm returns in asset sales when little or no labor is transferred, which helps validate our measure of human capital relatedness.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee, Kyeong Hun & Mauer, David C. & Xu, Emma Qianying, 2018. "Human capital relatedness and mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 111-135.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:129:y:2018:i:1:p:111-135
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2018.03.008
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Human capital relatedness; Mergers and acquisitions; Asset sales;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions

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