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The Value Of Economic Freedom In Cross-Border Mergers, Vivek Pandey, Tanja Steigner, Ninon K. Sutton

Accounting, Finance & Business Law Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study examines the impact of economic freedom in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) using a global sample of 6159 takeovers involving acquirers from 56 different countries and foreign targets from 130 countries. The results reveal that acquirers with an economic freedom advantage over their targets experience higher short-run and long-run abnormal returns after controlling for other important country and merger characteristics. At the same time, the level of economic freedom in the target country relative to the bidder country positively impacts target shareholders’ announcement wealth effects and merger premiums. The results are robust to various control variables, industry, year and …