How anticipated employee mobility affects acquisition likelihood: Evidence from a natural experiment
基于战略要素市场理论，利用自然实验发现，限制员工流动会提高企业成为收购目标的可能性，且该效应在知识员工多或州内竞争激烈时更强。
This study draws on strategic factor market theory and argues that acquirers' decisions regarding whether to bid for a firm reflect their expectations about employee departure from the firm post‐acquisition, suggesting a negative relationship between the anticipated employee departure from a firm and the likelihood of the firm becoming an acquisition target. Using a natural experiment and a difference‐in‐differences approach, we find causal evidence that constraints on employee mobility raise the likelihood of a firm becoming an acquisition target. The causal effect is stronger when a firm employs more knowledge workers in its workforce and when it faces greater in‐state competition; by contrast, the effect is weaker when a firm is protected by a stronger intellectual property regime that mitigates the consequences of employee mobility . Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.