IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-03125216.html

Highly skilled and well connected: Migrant inventors in cross-border M&As

Author

Listed:
  • D. Useche
  • Ernest Miguelez

    (GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Francesco Lissoni

    (GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Based on a relational view of international business, we investigate the role of migrant inventors in cross-border mergers and acquisitions undertaken by R&D-active firms. We hypothesize that the migrant inventors' international social networks can be leveraged by their employers in order to identify and/or integrate relevant knowledge bases of acquisition targets in the inventors' home country. We nuance our hypothesis by means of several conditional logistic regressions on a large matched sample of deals and control cases. The impact of migrant inventors increases with the distance between countries and for targets located in countries with weak administrative/legal systems, as well as when targets are either innovative or belong to high-tech sectors or to the same sector as the acquirer, and for full versus partial acquisitions.

Suggested Citation

  • D. Useche & Ernest Miguelez & Francesco Lissoni, 2021. "Highly skilled and well connected: Migrant inventors in cross-border M&As," Working Papers hal-03125216, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03125216
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Alba Marino & Francesco Quatraro, 2023. "Leveraging global recombinant capabilities for green technologies: the role of ethnic diversity in MNEs’ dynamics," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 1413-1445, August.
    3. Massimiliano Coda Zabetta & Ernest Miguelez & Francesco Lissoni & Sarah Hegarty, 2025. "Foreign-origin managers and FDI location choice," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 56(2), pages 194-202, March.
    4. Elizabeth Salamanca & Jorge Alcaraz, 2024. "Can high-skilled Mexicans’ migration adopt a positive externality view under a stakeholders’ approach?," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 51(3), pages 629-644, September.
    5. Pellegrino, Gabriele & Penner, Orion & Piguet, Etienne & de Rassenfosse, Gaétan, 2023. "Productivity gains from migration: Evidence from inventors," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    6. Vincenzo Butticè & Diego Useche, 2024. "Editorial," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 51(3), pages 541-549, September.
    7. Horatio M. Morgan & Sui Sui & Shavin Malhotra, 2021. "No place like home: The effect of exporting to the country of origin on the financial performance of immigrant-owned SMEs," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(3), pages 504-524, April.
    8. Grazia Santangelo & Anupama Phene & Nicole Coviello & Rosalie L. Tung & Teppo Felin, 2025. "Microfoundations as a toolkit for international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 56(6), pages 681-690, August.
    9. Vrontis, Demetris & Shams, Riad & Thrassou, Alkis & Kafouros, Mario, 2024. "Global strategy evolution, devolution or revolution: Disruptions to globalization and international business introversion," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(5).
    10. El-Khatib, Rwan & Jandik, Dobrina & Jandik, Tomas, 2025. "Does social network connectedness affect acquirer merger performance around the world?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    11. Ahsan, Faisal Mohammad & Popli, Manish & Kumar, Vikas, 2024. "Formal institutions and cross-border mergers and acquisitions: A systematic literature review and research agenda," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(5).
    12. Suin Lee & Christos Pantzalis & Jung Chul Park, 2024. "Interstate migration‐based social networks and M&A decisions," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 59(1), pages 113-153, February.
    13. Delios, Andrew & Li, Jiatao & Schotter, Andreas P.J. & Vrontis, Demetris, 2024. "Challenging the orthodoxy in international business research: Directions for “new” research areas," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 59(4).
    14. Han, Xiaomin & Goxe, François & Freeman, Susan, 2024. "Internationalization through social networks: A systematic review and future research agenda," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(4).
    15. Ilya R. P. Cuypers & Gokhan Ertug & John Cantwell & Akbar Zaheer & Martin Kilduff, 2020. "Making connections: Social networks in international business," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 51(5), pages 714-736, July.
    16. Sina Grosskopf & Christoph Barmeyer & Andreas Landes, 2024. "Organizational integration of highly skilled migrants? Social worlds as multiple cultures dismantling conventional framings," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 51(3), pages 691-724, September.
    17. Andrea Morrison, 2023. "Towards an evolutionary economic geography research agenda to study migration and innovation," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 16(3), pages 529-542.
    18. Jianquan Guo & He Cheng, 2024. "Acquirers’ carbon risk, environmental regulation, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions: evidence from China," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 26(6), pages 15861-15904, June.
    19. Raghavendra, Chandrika & Yadav, Miklesh Prasad & Sharif, Taimur & Abedin, Mohammad Zoynul, 2025. "Does human flight and brain drain affect cross-border acquisitions? Insights into tobit and binomial regression models," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    20. Ilya R. P. Cuypers & Gokhan Ertug & John Cantwell & Akbar Zaheer & Martin Kilduff, 0. "Making connections: Social networks in international business," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 0, pages 1-23.
    21. Kafouros, Mario & Mavroudi, Eva & Aliyev, Murod & Hong, Junjie, 2025. "Technological complexity and the creation of impactful technologies: The role of inventors' international diversity and expertise," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(3).
    22. Chen, Feiqiong & Liu, Huiqian & Ge, Yuhao, 2021. "How does integration affect industrial innovation through networks in technology-sourcing overseas M&A? A comparison between China and the US," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 281-292.
    23. Yuanyuan Huang & Lu Shen & Chuang Zhang, 2022. "Home-country government support, the belt and road initiative, and the foreign performance of Chinese state-owned subsidiaries," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 1023-1049, September.
    24. Vincenzo Butticè & Diego Useche, 2022. "Crowdfunding to overcome the immigrant entrepreneurs’ liability of outsidership: the role of internal social capital," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1519-1540, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:hal:wpaper:hal-03125216. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.