IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lie/dpaper/35.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mergers and Acquisitions Over the Cycle: An Empirical Investigation

Author

Listed:
  • Ziran Ding

    (Bank of Lithuania and KTU)

  • Benjamin Hemingway

    (Bank of England)

Abstract

Using US firm-level data from 1985-2019, this paper investigates how the characteristics of matches between acquirers and targets of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) vary over the business cycle. We document several findings. (1) Acquirers are on average larger, more profitable, and in a stronger financial position than targets. (2) Targets are more innovative than acquirers, and (3) M&A targets during a recession have worse financial health but higher levels of innovation compared to M&A targets in booms. Our empirical evidence suggests that an economy may benefit from an economy may benefit from adjusting its antitrust stance over the business cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Ziran Ding & Benjamin Hemingway, 2024. "Mergers and Acquisitions Over the Cycle: An Empirical Investigation," Bank of Lithuania Discussion Paper Series 35, Bank of Lithuania.
    • Handle: RePEc:lie:dpaper:35
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.lb.lt/uploads/publications/docs/43920_6baa1a4d1d11e74f1bf845e3caf54ff9.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    mergers; M&A; business cycle; R&D; productivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lie:dpaper:35. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Aurelija Proskute (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lbanklt.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.