IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v126y2017i2p300-319.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Acquiring growth

Author

Listed:
  • Levine, Oliver

Abstract

I develop a model of mergers in which M&A deals are used to reallocate investment opportunities. In equilibrium, acquirers lack internal growth options and seek out projects from targets in the M&A market. The model is able to reconcile many features of the merger data that I document, including the high productivity, investment, and valuation of target firms. Furthermore, in my model, profitability is highly predictive of acquisition, and merger transactions naturally lead to a substantial drop in profitability despite creating value for the acquirer.

Suggested Citation

  • Levine, Oliver, 2017. "Acquiring growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 300-319.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:126:y:2017:i:2:p:300-319
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2017.07.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X17301484
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfineco.2017.07.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zhao, Jake, 2020. "Accounting for the corporate cash increase," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    2. Li, Xiaoyang, 2013. "Productivity, restructuring, and the gains from takeovers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 250-271.
    3. Agrawal, Anup & Jaffe, Jeffrey F., 2003. "Do Takeover Targets Underperform? Evidence from Operating and Stock Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(4), pages 721-746, December.
    4. Ricardo J. Caballero & Eduardo M. R. A. Engel, 1999. "Explaining Investment Dynamics in U.S. Manufacturing: A Generalized (S,s) Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(4), pages 783-826, July.
    5. Michael C. Jensen, 2010. "The Modern Industrial Revolution, Exit, and the Failure of Internal Control Systems," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 22(1), pages 43-58, January.
    6. Kim, E Han & Singal, Vijay, 1993. "Mergers and Market Power: Evidence from the Airline Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 549-569, June.
    7. Christensen, Laurits R & Jorgenson, Dale W & Lau, Lawrence J, 1973. "Transcendental Logarithmic Production Frontiers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 55(1), pages 28-45, February.
    8. Abel, Andrew B. & Eberly, Janice C., 1999. "The effects of irreversibility and uncertainty on capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 339-377, December.
    9. Jovanovic, Boyan, 2009. "Investment options and the business cycle," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(6), pages 2247-2265, November.
    10. Gordon M. Phillips & Alexei Zhdanov, 2013. "R&D and the Incentives from Merger and Acquisition Activity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(1), pages 34-78.
    11. Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2010. "Technology Capital and the US Current Account," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1493-1522, September.
    12. Lichtenberg, Frank R. & Siegel, Donald, 1990. "The effects of leveraged buyouts on productivity and related aspects of firm behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 165-194, September.
    13. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:2:p:507-535 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Xinlei Zhao, 2009. "Technological Innovation and Acquisitions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(7), pages 1170-1183, July.
    15. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 2003. "Stock market driven acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 295-311, December.
    16. Janice Eberly & Sergio Rebelo & Nicolas Vincent, 2008. "Investment and Value: A Neoclassical Benchmark," Cahiers de recherche 08-03, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée.
    17. Warusawitharana, Missaka, 2008. "Corporate asset purchases and sales: Theory and evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 471-497, February.
    18. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    19. Jan Bena & Kai Li, 2014. "Corporate Innovations and Mergers and Acquisitions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(5), pages 1923-1960, October.
    20. Vojislav Maksimovic & Gordon Phillips, 2001. "The Market for Corporate Assets: Who Engages in Mergers and Asset Sales and Are There Efficiency Gains?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(6), pages 2019-2065, December.
    21. Caballero, Ricardo J & Pindyck, Robert S, 1996. "Uncertainty, Investment, and Industry Evolution," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(3), pages 641-662, August.
    22. Liu Yang, 2008. "The Real Determinants of Asset Sales," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2231-2262, October.
    23. Cleveland, William S. & Devlin, Susan J. & Grosse, Eric, 1988. "Regression by local fitting : Methods, properties, and computational algorithms," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 87-114, January.
    24. Matthew Rhodes‐Kropf & David T. Robinson, 2008. "The Market for Mergers and the Boundaries of the Firm," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1169-1211, June.
    25. Roll, Richard, 1986. "The Hubris Hypothesis of Corporate Takeovers," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(2), pages 197-216, April.
    26. Andrea L. Eisfeldt & Dimitris Papanikolaou, 2013. "Organization Capital and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(4), pages 1365-1406, August.
    27. Whited, Toni M, 1992. "Debt, Liquidity Constraints, and Corporate Investment: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1425-1460, September.
    28. Henry G. Grabowksi & Dennis C. Mueller, 1978. "Industrial Research and Development, Intangible Capital Stocks, and Firm Profit Rates," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 328-343, Autumn.
    29. Boyan Jovanovic & Peter L. Rousseau, 2008. "Mergers as Reallocation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(4), pages 765-776, November.
    30. Robert H. McGuckin & Sang V. Nguyen, 1995. "On Productivity and Plant Ownership Change: New Evidence from the Longitudinal Research Database," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(2), pages 257-276, Summer.
    31. Baruch Lev & Suresh Radhakrishnan, 2005. "The Valuation of Organization Capital," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Capital in the New Economy, pages 73-110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    32. Harford, Jarrad, 2005. "What drives merger waves?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 529-560, September.
    33. Jarrad Harford, 1999. "Corporate Cash Reserves and Acquisitions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 1969-1997, December.
    34. Rhodes-Kropf, Matthew & Robinson, David T. & Viswanathan, S., 2005. "Valuation waves and merger activity: The empirical evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 561-603, September.
    35. Eisfeldt, Andrea L. & Rampini, Adriano A., 2006. "Capital reallocation and liquidity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 369-399, April.
    36. Faria, Andre L., 2008. "Mergers and the market for organization capital," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 71-100, January.
    37. Boyan Jovanovic & Peter L. Rousseau, 2002. "The Q-Theory of Mergers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 198-204, May.
    38. Higgins, Matthew J. & Rodriguez, Daniel, 2006. "The outsourcing of R&D through acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 351-383, May.
    39. Joao F. Gomes, 2001. "Financing Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1263-1285, December.
    40. Andrade, Gregor & Stafford, Erik, 2004. "Investigating the economic role of mergers," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 1-36, January.
    41. Denny, Michael & Fuss, Melvyn A, 1977. "The Use of Approximation Analysis to Test for Separability and the Existence of Consistent Aggregates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 404-418, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Caggese & Ander Pérez-Orive, 2017. "Capital Misallocation and Secular Stagnation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-009, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Wang, Wenyu, 2018. "Bid anticipation, information revelation, and merger gains," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 320-343.
    3. Harris, Jeremiah & O'Brien, William, 2018. "U.S. worldwide taxation and domestic mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 419-438.
    4. Dimopoulos, Theodosios & Sacchetto, Stefano, 2017. "Merger activity in industry equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 200-226.
    5. Oh, Seungjoon, 2018. "Fire-sale acquisitions and intra-industry contagion," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 265-293.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martynova, Marina & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "A century of corporate takeovers: What have we learned and where do we stand?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 2148-2177, October.
    2. Debarati Bhattacharya & Wei-Hsien Li, 2020. "Wealth effects of relative firm value in M&A deals: reallocation of physical versus intangible assets," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(4), pages 1513-1548, November.
    3. Martynova, M. & Renneboog, L.D.R., 2005. "Takeover Waves : Triggers, Performance and Motives," Discussion Paper 2005-029, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    4. Farida Akhtar, 2016. "The probability of a firm making a takeover bid: An empirical analysis of Australian firms," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 41(1), pages 27-54, February.
    5. Ray Sugata & Warusawitharana Missaka, 2009. "An Efficiency Perspective on the Gains from Mergers and Asset Purchases," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-27, October.
    6. Liu Yang, 2008. "The Real Determinants of Asset Sales," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2231-2262, October.
    7. Wenjing Ouyang & Samuel H. Szewczyk, 2018. "Stock price informativeness on the sensitivity of strategic M&A investment to Q," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 745-774, April.
    8. Martynova, M., 2006. "The market for corporate control and corporate governance regulation in Europe," Other publications TiSEM 8651e281-4914-41f2-ac14-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Wang, Wenyu, 2018. "Bid anticipation, information revelation, and merger gains," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 320-343.
    10. Mamun, Abdullah & Mishra, Dev & Zhan, Lei, 2021. "The value of intangible capital transfer in mergers," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    11. Dimopoulos, Theodosios & Sacchetto, Stefano, 2017. "Merger activity in industry equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 200-226.
    12. Ovtchinnikov, Alexei V., 2013. "Merger waves following industry deregulation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 51-76.
    13. Mahdiyeh Entezarkheir & Saeed Moshiri, 2021. "Innovation spillover and merger decisions," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(5), pages 2419-2448, November.
    14. Albert Banal‐Estañol & Paul Heidhues & Rainer Nitsche & Jo Seldeslachts, 2010. "Screening And Merger Activity," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 794-817, December.
    15. Srdan Komlenovic & Abdullah Mamun & Dev Mishra, 2011. "Business cycle and aggregate industry mergers," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 35(3), pages 239-259, July.
    16. Tianxu Jiang & Min Zhu, 2021. "The impact of innovation on companies’ cross-border mergers and acquisitions: evidence from China," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 969-991, June.
    17. Becher, David & Jensen, Tyler K. & Liu, Tingting, 2020. "Acquisitions and funding conditions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    18. Maksimovic, Vojislav & Phillips, Gordon & Prabhala, N.R., 2011. "Post-merger restructuring and the boundaries of the firm," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 317-343.
    19. Eckbo, B. Espen, 2009. "Bidding strategies and takeover premiums: A review," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 149-178, February.
    20. Huang, Jingong & Xie, Taojun, 2023. "Technology centrality, bilateral knowledge spillovers and mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mergers and acquisitions; Growth options; Intangible capital; Corporate investment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • 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:eee:jfinec:v:126:y:2017:i:2:p:300-319. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    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.