Sailesh Tanna

This paper examines the extent to which host‐country institutions influence the relationship between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth. We develop a theoretical model to analyse how different types of institutions condition the FDI‐growth relationship and use various institutional proxies to conduct threshold estimations on panel data for 51 developed and developing countries over the period 1991–2016. Our results consistently reveal a robust, contingent effect of political stability on the FDI‐growth nexus, suggesting that, among all the institutional factors considered, the absence of civil conflict or violence in the host economy is most critical in terms of yielding both direct and indirect growth‐enhancing benefits associated with technology transfer and spillover effects from FDI inflows. This finding is pertinent to both developed and developing countries, although the threshold level of political stability required to achieve sizeable growth benefits from FDI tends to be lower for developing countries.

This study investigates the impact of bank mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on bank efficiency and how such efficiencies are expected to influence bank shareholder value upon merger announcements. It employs stochastic frontier analysis and event study methods along with regression analysis to account for the influences of pre-merger and post-merger efficiencies of bidders and targets in assessing their impact on bidder abnormal returns. Using data for a sample of large commercial bank M&As from 22 European countries, the authors find that bank bidders achieve short-term shareholder value gains from merger announcements, and this could be associated with the perceived efficiencies of bidders and targets. More generally, the evidence supports the view that bank profit efficiency has a positive influence on bidder returns from merger announcements, and therefore markets do take into account the importance of efficiency in value creation. This suggests that stock markets price operational efficiency of banks in predicting value gains from European Bank M&As.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the probability of deal success/failure in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) transactions is influenced by a range of deal, firm and country-specific characteristics which tend to affect acquirers’ shareholder returns. The specific hypotheses under investigation relate to the method of payment (cash versus stock), target status (listed versus non-listed), diversification (domestic versus cross-border and industry-wide) and acquirers’ prior bidding experience. Additionally, the authors also investigate whether announced deals reflect an expectation about likelihood of deal completion. Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyse the probability of deal success/failure in M&As by combining event study and probit regression-based methods. The authors use the standard event study methodology to calculate acquirers’ abnormal returns for up to 10 days before and after the announcement date. In the probit model, the dependent variable is the probability of deal i being failure depending on four sets of explanatory variables: method of payment, target status, diversification and acquirer bidding experience, along with a set of control variables. Findings: The findings from event study confirm that market reaction is indifferent to whether announced deals are likely to be successfully completed or not, consistent with the efficient markets hypothesis. However, the results from cross-sectional, cross-country regressions confirm that the aforementioned deal characteristics, as well as certain firm and country level attributes do influence the likelihood of whether an announced deal is subsequently completed or terminated. Originality/value: In examining whether the specific characteristics affecting the likelihood that M&A transactions, once announced, will ultimately succeed or fail, it seems natural to ask whether the market reaction at the time of deal announcement reflects an expectation regarding deal completion. This could be associated with specific deal or firm-level characteristics influencing shareholder returns or risk, and represents a unique contribution of this study, over and above the use of a global sample of M&A data. The empirical analysis investigates these issues by using an extensive, global sample of 46,758 M&A transactions from 180 countries and 80 industries, which took place between the years 1977 and 2012.

This paper studies financial contagion in a core-periphery interbank network where core banks are large in balance sheet size while periphery banks are smaller and link only with the core banks. Core banks are all bilaterally linked and intermediate liquidity for periphery banks. We establish analytic conditions under which financial contagion propagates in the core-periphery network and examine the extent to which heterogeneity associated with size and number of banks affects these conditions. We show that the failure of core banks does not necessarily imply contagious failure of periphery banks; the core-periphery network structure exhibits a ‘robust-yet-fragile’ tendency with increased size of core banks; and the resilience of the network to contagion depends on the number of core banks, the number of periphery banks, and the level of interbank liquidity intermediated between the core banks. We also find that, under certain conditions, the core-periphery network is more resilient than the complete network with increased size of core banks.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on acquiring company systematic risk using a global sample of 34,221 completed deals that occurred between the years 1977 and 2012, covering 163 countries and 85 industries.Design/methodology/approach: Acquirers’ systematic risk (beta) is calculated using the capital asset pricing model. The change in acquirers’ beta post-merger is obtained using event study and tested for mean differences across various sub-categories of deals. Cross-sectional regressions are then performed to test several hypotheses relating to the impact of diversification, method of payment, target status and prior experience on acquirers’ risk.Findings: For the overall sample, the evidence suggests that acquirers’ beta tends to increase post-merger, but only in cases where their pre-merger risk is relatively low in relation to the risk of the market. The authors also show that cash payment deals for publicly listed targets contribute to reducing acquirers’ risk while stock payment increase risk. Diversification, whether global or across industry, has no significant impact on risk. On the other hand, for serial acquirers, the risk is increased significantly with more M&As.Originality/value: This study contributes in a unique way by providing global evidence on acquirers’ systematic risk using a very large and diverse sample of M&A deals and investigating not only the impact of diversification on risk but also of other deal characteristics (e.g. method of payment, target status, acquirers’ prior experience) which have not been previously examined.

This paper investigates the relevance of external debt as a factor inhibiting economic growth gains to be accrued from foreign direct investment (FDI). We develop a model that formalizes a mechanism to allow for the influence of external debt in the transmission of FDI‐generated externalities and conduct threshold regressions to test the existence of a debt contingency effect that limits the positive impact of inward FDI on growth. With the use of annual as well as 5‐year averaged data for 39 developing countries over the period 1984–2010, our findings support the hypothesis that FDI‐induced growth is dependent on the external debt constraint. In particular, we show that beyond a certain threshold high indebtedness constrains economies from reaping growth benefits from FDI as they seek to reduce their debt levels. In this scenario, the evidence also shows that increasing financial development can mitigate the negative influence of high external debt on the FDI–growth nexus.