IP protection and ownership in cross-border acquisitions

Ofra Bazel-Shoham, Sang Mook Lee, Mohammad Faisal Ahammad, Shlomo Y. Tarba and Ilan Alon

International Business Review, 2023, vol. 32, issue 3

Abstract: We use the institutional theory to examine the impact of intellectual property protection on US multinational corporations (MNCs) ownership levels of their foreign acquisitions. Based on a sample of 7238 completed international M&A deals made by US MNCs from 1998 to 2017, we found that multinationals protect their intellectual property through more ownership when they are technologically intensive and invest more when IP protection is strong. However, IP protection negatively moderates the need for more ownership for technologically-intensive multinational corporations. Our results are robust to a battery of empirical tests, including a unique instrumental variable approach. This leads us to claim that our results are not merely correlated but are causal.

Keywords: IP protection; Institutional theory; M&A; Technological intensity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096959312300001X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iburev:v:32:y:2023:i:3:s096959312300001x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/133/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... me/133/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.ibusrev.2023.102101

Access Statistics for this article

International Business Review is currently edited by P. Ghauri

More articles in International Business Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().