Are There Waves in Merger Activity After All?

Dennis Gärtner () and Daniel Halbheer

No 92, Working Papers from University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU)

Abstract: This paper investigates the merger wave hypothesis for the US and the UK employing a Markov regime switching model. Using quarterly data covering the last thirty years, for the US, we identify the beginning of a merger wave in the mid 1990s but not the much-discussed 1980s merger wave. We argue that the latter finding can be ascribed to the refined methods of inference offered by the Gibbs sampling approach. As opposed to the US, mergers in the UK exhibit multiple waves, with activity surging in the early 1970s and the late 1980s.

Keywords: MergerWaves; Markov Regime Switching Regression Model; Gibbs Sampling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C11 C15 C32 G34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com and nep-ind
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/ISU_WPS/92_ISU_full.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Are there waves in merger activity after all? (2009)
Working Paper: Are There Waves in Merger Activity After All? (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:wpaper:0092

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