“…To control for acquirer firm's key characteristics, a set of acquirer firm-specific variables were included, including Firm size (in log), measured as the natural logarithm of the acquirer firm's total assets (US$ million; Kling, Ghobadian, Hitt, Weitzel, & O'Regan, 2014); Profitability, measured as the preacquisition return on equity (%; Kling et al, 2014); R&D intensity, measured as R&D expenditure as a percentage of net sales (Makri, Hitt, & Lane, 2010); Firm age (in log), calculated as the natural logarithm of the greatest number among years since the founding date, years since the first appearance of CRSP, or years since IPO date (Brown, Helland, & Smith, 2006); Acquisition experience (in log), measured as the natural logarithm of number of acquisitions completed in the past (Booij & Rao Sahib, 2012); and Leverage, measured as the book value of debt (debt in current liability plus long-term debt) as a ratio to the book value of total assets (Bonaime et al, 2018).…”