PurposeThe present article analyses the effects of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBM&As) on targets' total factor productivity (TFP), employment, wages and intangible-asset investment. The author investigates whether the impact of CBM&As differs depending on the origin of the investing multinational (MNE). The author distinguishes between CBM&As from European countries, other developed countries and emerging countries.Design/methodology/approachThe author makes use of a unique firm-level data set of foreign direct investment in the French manufacturing sector. The authors applies propensity score matching and difference in differences to estimate the effect of CBM&As.FindingsThe results show that the consequences of CBM&As differ strongly depending on the origin. CBM&As from European MNEs have a positive impact on TFP, wages and intangible-asset investment, and those from emerging countries seem to increase wages and intangible-asset investments. In contrast, CBM&As that originate from MNEs from other developed countries do not have a significant effect.Originality/valueThis article contributes to the growing literature on the effects of foreign direct investment that highlights the relevance of accounting for the MNEs' origin. In particular, it is the first to address the impact of emerging-country MNEs' CBM&As in Europe.

The present work reassesses the impact of good governance and democracy on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in oil-abundant countries. To this end, we estimate the effect of host countries’ institutions on greenfield FDI, using a gravity equation for a dataset that covers 182 countries during 2003-2012. Our findings confirm that compliance to rule of law, lack of corruption, political stability and democracy could boost new FDI links through the extensive margin. Our results could not rule out the “oil curse”, meaning that oil producers attract fewer new greenfield projects than similar countries without oil. Unlike other studies, we show that the impact of institutions is not necessarily undermined by the presence of natural resources.

The present paper deals with how the insertion in international trade and global value chains (GVCs) of countries affects their capacity of attracting foreign mergers and acquisitions (M&As). To this end, we combine data for bilateral M&As and trade in value added for the period 2001–15 and estimate an augmented gravity equation. Results indicate that trade openness per se does not favour M&As. Nevertheless, bilateral free trade agreements, heterogeneity of destinations (sources) for exports (imports) of intermediate and final goods, and position and participation in global value chains are relevant for explaining bilateral M&As. Moreover, their role is significantly different depending on the level of development of the home and host countries.

In this article, we examine the impact of terrorist attacks on asylum-related migration flows. So far, the literature that examines the “push factors” such as terrorism that explain forced migration has omitted the fact that the vast majority of people forced to flee typically do so toward other locations within the country. The novel feature of our research is the estimation of a structural gravity equation that includes both international migration and internally displaced persons (IDP), a theoretically consistent framework that allows us to identify country-specific variables such as terror attacks. For that purpose, we use information on the number of asylum applications, the number of IDP, and the number of terrorist attacks in each country for a sample of 119 origin developing countries and 141 destination countries over 2009–2018. The empirical results reveal several interesting and policy-relevant traits. Firstly, forced migration abroad is still minimal compared to IDP, but globalization forces are pushing up the ratio. Secondly, terror violence has a positive and significant effect on asylum migration flows relative to the number of IDP. Thirdly, omitting internally displaced people biases downward the impact of terrorism on asylum applications. Fourthly, we observe regional heterogeneity in the effect of terrorism on asylum migration flows; in Latin America, terrorist attacks have a much larger impact on the number of asylum applications relative to IDP than in Asia or Africa.

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This paper explores whether social ties, proxied by Facebook friendship links, can explain why the number and value of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are greater within countries than between countries. We find that social ties are positively correlated with the number and value of M&As. We also demonstrate that the home bias in M&As is greatly reduced once we control for the differences in social ties between and within countries. We further find that social ties particularly facilitate M&As when the level of corruption is high, press freedom is limited in the target country, and there are more cultural differences between the acquirer and target countries.

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