Does Terrorism Affect Acquisitions?
研究发现，恐怖袭击后两年内，袭击附近地区的企业更少成为收购目标，且收购溢价更低，这源于不确定性增加导致企业延迟投资。
Using terrorist attacks as an exogenous shock to uncertainty, we provide evidence that firms located near terrorism-stricken areas are less likely takeover targets for two years after the attack and receive lower acquisition premiums. The latter finding is reflected in lower target firm abnormal returns and synergy gains. Additionally, in terrorism-stricken areas, target firms are associated with a lower share of synergies, withdrawn deals rise, and acquirers are more likely to get involved in acquisitions of target firms located in different metropolitan statistical areas than their own or acquire faraway target firms. We attribute our results to the real options theory, which predicts that high uncertainty increases the value of the option to delay investments. Additionally, we show that the impact on target firm human capital and acquirer CEO uncertainty and fear are potential sources of terrorism-induced uncertainty with the former source prevailing over the latter. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4506 .