تاثیر ادغام های برون مرزی و ادغام بر کارفرمایان R'& D - شواهد در سطح بنگاه

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between cross-border acquisitions and innovation activities of the acquirer. For the empirical analysis a unique firm-level data set is constructed that combines survey data for German firms with a merger and acquisition database. After a cross-border acquisition, investing firms display a higher rate of domestic expenditures for research and development. Controlling for endogeneity of foreign acquisitions by estimating a two-equation system with limited dependent variables and applying instrumental variable techniques it is found that part of this correlation stems from a causal effect. The estimated effects are robust towards alternative identification strategies and are higher in industries with high knowledge intensity. The analysis is complemented by an investigation of the effects on tangible investment spending and by a comparison of the effects of cross-border acquisitions to those of greenfield foreign direct investments and domestic acquisitions.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have increased all over the world over the past decades to reach a volume of more than US$ 1.6 trillion in 2011. Much of this increase can be attributed to the rising number of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As).1 From the home countries' perspective, cross-border M&As can on the one hand enable market access and the transfer of knowledge from abroad which may strengthen domestic technological capabilities. On the other hand, there might be negative effects if domestic activities are replaced with similar investments abroad. From the host countries' perspective, many policy makers try to prevent foreign takeovers of domestic firm, especially in knowledge intensive industries.2 The global effects of mutual restrictions on cross-border M&As depend on the effects on both the acquirer and the target firm. Thus, it is important to complement existing knowledge on the effects on innovation in target firms with empirical evidence on the investing firms. Cross-border acquisitions constitute the main form of FDI in industries with a high R&D intensity (UNCTAD, 2007). The effects of international M&As on R&D have important policy implications since innovative activity is regarded as a key factor to spur productivity and growth. Existing empirical evidence on the effects of cross-border M&As is mostly limited to target firms, while little is known about the effects on the acquiring firms.3 Only recently, cross-border acquisitions as a type of FDI started to receive more attention in the international trade literature. Recent theoretical contributions analyze the role of firm heterogeneity and different motives that determine the choice of foreign market entry modes (Nocke and Yeaple, 2007 and Norbäck and Persson, 2007). These models argue that international M&As are mainly driven by the desire to acquire complementary assets and technology while greenfield investments (new firms or production units founded by foreign investors) do not provide direct access to foreign knowledge and are rather undertaken to exploit existing firm-specific assets of the acquiring firm or factor price differences across countries. If complementarities between acquiring and target firm play a role for cross-border acquisitions and these involve innovative activities it is likely that the effects on domestic R&D are quite different from those of greenfield investments. Hence, it is not possible to derive conclusions about the effects of cross-border M&As from existing studies on greenfield investments or aggregate FDI. It is also likely that the effects of international acquisitions are different from those of domestic transactions since previous research argues that the motives and characteristics of cross-border M&As are different (see Shimizu et al., 2004, for instance). Theory suggests that the characteristics of firms that self-select into international acquisitions are quite different from those that engage in domestic acquisitions (see e.g. Nocke and Yeaple, 2008). Market access – for instance via access to existing networks or market specific knowledge like marketing capabilities – might be a more important motive for international than for domestic M&As (see e.g. Nocke and Yeaple, 2008, Guadalupe et al., 2012 and Blonigen et al., 2012). Improved market access from the perspective of the acquiring firm may increase the incentives to invest in cost reducing or quality enhancing innovations as these can be applied to a larger production output. Further, as efficiency differences within an industry are likely to be more pronounced across than within countries (Neary, 2007) it is likely that foreign and domestic acquisition targets have different characteristics. This may result in different feedback effects on the investing firm as well. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of cross-border acquisitions on R&D activities of the investing firm. This paper contributes to the existing literature in several aspects. First, empirical evidence on the effects of international acquisitions on innovation activities of the acquirer is sparse.4 Further, I contribute to the industrial organization and the international economics literature by comparing the effects of cross-border acquisitions to those of domestic acquisitions and greenfield foreign direct investments. Heterogeneous effects according to industries and target countries with different characteristics are provided. For this purpose a unique firm-level data set is constructed that combines survey data for German firms with balance sheet data and an M&A database. The case of Germany is in particular interesting as it is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world and is considerably engaged in FDI and global M&As. The empirical framework accounts for unobserved firm heterogeneity and the possible endogeneity of cross-border acquisitions. The main results are based on a non-linear two-equation model in which the decision to engage in an international acquisition as well as the decision of how much to spend on R&D is explained simultaneously. Identification is achieved by exploiting unexpected shocks to foreign market growth rates and variation in the distance to foreign markets across firms. The robustness of the results towards alternative empirical models and identifying assumptions is checked. This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, I summarize the related literature. Section 3 describes the empirical model and Section 4 provides a description of the data. Results of the empirical analysis are presented in Section 5. Section 6 concludes.

While there is a large literature that analyzes the effects of cross-border acquisitions on productivity and innovation in target firms, there is a lack of evidence of how these outcomes are affected in investing firms. This paper analyzes the impact of cross-border acquisitions on domestic R&D expenditures of the acquiring firms. The data shows that firms engaging in cross-border acquisitions are characterized by a considerably higher R&D intensity than other firms. These differences are also visible within industries and after conditioning on a large set of firm-level and market characteristics. Applying a non-linear equation system and exploiting unexpected changes to foreign growth rates and variation in distance to foreign markets across firms, it is found that a large part of the partial correlation seems to arise from a causal effect of cross-border acquisitions on domestic R&D. The estimation results suggest that a cross-border acquisition raises the average R&D to sales ratio in acquiring firms by about 1.5 percentage points. This is more than 17% of the average R&D to sales ratio of all firms that spend a positive amount on R&D and still more than 8% of the average R&D intensity of acquiring firms that engage in R&D. This effect is especially driven by knowledge intensive industries where a conditional marginal effect of about 3.5 percentage points was estimated. A further analysis of heterogeneous effects indicates that positive effects are more likely if acquiring firms engage in product rather than process innovation and if firms invest in countries with high technological development. The results are robust towards several alternative specifications that rule out the most likely cases that would invalidate the exclusion restrictions, and the main results shown are confirmed in alternative empirical models with different identifying assumptions including a propensity score matching approach. The results do neither show up for domestic acquisitions nor for greenfield investments. This suggests that the effects of cross-border acquisitions do not reflect the general effect of FDI or market power enhancing acquisitions but rather the access to complementary foreign technologies and new markets and possibly a partly reallocation of R&D from the target to the acquiring firm. Further, no significant effect of both greenfield FDI and cross-border acquisitions on tangible investment spending was found. The results indicate that policy measures that increase the incentives for firms to acquire foreign acquisition targets can be beneficial to the source countries' domestic technology base. Mutual restrictions on inward international M&As can have negative effects on global innovation as they might prevent acquiring firms from increasing their domestic R&D activities. A shortcoming of this paper is that the analysis is restricted to firms with up to € 500 million annual turnover. A significant amount of M&As is undertaken by very large firms and it has to be left for future research whether the effects of M&As undertaken by these firms are different. For future research it might also be interesting to investigate post-acquisition innovation activities in both acquirer and target companies involved in the same cross-border M&A. These results might then be compared to the outcomes of firms conducting greenfield FDI and their foreign affiliates and to the results of domestic M&As. Further, it might be interesting to investigate whether the results of this paper hold in other countries with different technological capabilities or industry structures.