Local political corruption and M&As

• Main Authors: LIU, Chun, CHEN, Yang, LI, Shanmin, SUN, Liang, YANG, Mengjie
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Political corruption; Anti-corruption campaign; M&As; China; Accounting; Asian Studies; Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics; Corporate Finance
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/1960; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soa_research/article/2987/viewcontent/LocalCorruption_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We examine the relation between local political corruption and firms' cross-province M&As using provincial-level data on corruption in China. The results show that firms in more corrupt regions are less likely to engage in cross-province M&As. Further analyses reveal that the effects of local corruption on the probability of cross-province M&As are stronger when corrupt officers have greater impeding benefits or lower impeding costs. Meanwhile, Both ex-ante intervention and ex post punishment are important channels through which corrupt officers hinder firms' cross province M&As. Moreover, informal institutions, such as social capital and informal networks can help to alleviate the negative impact of political corruption on firms' cross-province M&As. Our findings show that in the context of highly government intervention, cross-province M&As not only cannot be an effective channel to shield from expropriation, but are themselves highly distorted and lead to significant economic efficiency losses.