M&As and innovation: Evidence from acquiring private firms
研究发现收购私营企业比收购上市公司更能提升收购方的专利数量、质量和价值，并促进创新协同和发明人合作，这些效应在突破性技术行业更显著。
We show that acquisitions of private targets increase the quantity, quality, and value of the acquiring firms’ patents more than acquisitions of public targets. Private-target acquisitions also foster significantly greater innovation synergies, increase the total number of inventors, and promote new collaborations among inventors. These outcomes are associated with the acquirers’ expertise in identifying innovative private targets, are more pronounced in industries with breakthrough technologies, and are not driven by targets with existing patent portfolios. We also find that the patenting increases explain away the higher announcement returns for private versus public-target acquisitions. Overall, our results underscore the role of complementary innovation capabilities in driving value creation through the integration of private targets with publicly listed acquirers.