Inventors? Response to Firm Acquisitions

Arbeitspapier

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) constitute a disruption to the working environment of the inventive labor force of the acquired company. If inventors would respond with a decline of their patent productivity or departure from the firm this can be detrimental to the innovative process within the merged entity and can be contradictory to the aims of the firm acquisition. This paper provides empirical evidence on post-merger mobility and productivity of 673 inventors employed by European acquisition targets in the years 2000 and 2001. The empirical results show that 1.) the most productive and experienced individuals stay with the merged entity; 2.) inventors that left the acquired firm are less productive in post-merger years than those that stayed with the merged entity; 3.) M&As trigger inventor mobility, but do not lead to a decline in patent productivity if compared to a control group of inventors that have not been involved in a firm acquisition.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ZEW Discussion Papers ; No. 07-078

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Voting; Proxy Contests; Corporate Governance ; Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models; Threshold Regression Models ; Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
• Subject: M&As ; inventor mobility and productivity ; Übernahme ; Fusion ; Erfindung ; Wissenschaftler ; Arbeitsmobilität ; Patent ; Produktivgenossenschaft ; Europa

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Hussinger, Katrin
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW)
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2007

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/24663
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET