The Market for Mergers and the Boundaries of the Firm
结合产权理论，发现高市值账面比收购方通常不收购低市值账面比目标，而是相似企业配对，并构建连续时间模型解释这一现象，对研究并购决策的学者有参考价值。
ABSTRACT We relate the property rights theory of the firm to empirical regularities in the market for mergers and acquisitions. We first show that high market‐to‐book acquirers typically do not purchase low market‐to‐book targets. Instead, mergers pair together firms with similar ratios. We then build a continuous‐time model of investment and merger activity combining search, scarcity, and asset complementarity to explain this like buys like result. We test the model by relating like‐buys‐like to search frictions. Search frictions and assortative matching vary inversely, supporting the model over standard explanations.