Taxes and the Returns to Foreign Acquisitions in the United States
发现1979-1988年间美国公司被外资收购的超常回报随时间显著变化，1981年经济复苏税法通过后回报下降，1986年税制改革法案生效后回升，表明美国税制对外资并购收益有重要影响。
This paper documents a substantial intertetnporal variation in the abnormal returns of U.S. companies acquired by foreign firms over the 1979-1988 period. Returns decrease after 1980, when the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act was passed, and increase after 1986, when the Tax Reform Act went into effect. Similar results hold for acquisitions of partial ownership interests in U.S. firms by foreign companies. These findings are unchanged after controlling for exchange rates and for the other characteristics of the acquisitions. Overall, our findings are consistent with the conjecture that the U.S. tax system has a substantial impact on the benefits of foreign acquisitions in the U.S. • Scholes and Wolfson (1989, 1990, 1992) argue that changes in the U.S. tax law should have an effect on the level of foreign investments in the U.S. In particular, they predict decreased investment after the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) and increases after the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Evidence in support of these predictions is provided by Caves (1988) and Scholes and Wolfson (1990,1992), among others. An additional implication of Scholes and Wolfson's arguments is that the returns associated with foreign acquisitions in the U.S. should also display strong intertemporal variations, consistent with the changes in the tax laws. More specifically, we expect retums to decline after 1980 and increase again after 1986. Evidence in support of this conjecture is mixed, at best. Harris and Ravenscraft (1991) find that retums decline, both after 1981 and after 1986, for a large sample of foreign takeovers. Cebenoyan,