TY - EJOU AU - Krolikowski, K. Marcin W. AU - Okoeguale, O. Kevin TI - ECONOMIC SHOCKS, COMPETITION AND MERGER ACTIVITY T2 - Journal of Business Accounting and Finance Perspectives PY - 2019 VL - 1 IS - 1 SN - 2603-7475 AB - This study seeks to understand “how” economic shocks drive industry merger activity. We test whether economic shocks from deregulation and technological change drive industry merger activity by increasing industry competition, controlling for the effect of valuations. We find that these shocks drive merger activity through three channels related to industry competition; deregulation drives merger activity by increasing entry and cash flow volatility; technological change drives merger activity by increasing entry and inter-firm dispersion in the quality of production technology. These findings underscore the role of the competitive mechanism in how managers reallocate assets via mergers and support the view that the industry-level clustering of merger activity is an efficiency-driven restructuring response to increased competition. KW - Mergers KW - Deregulation KW - Technological Change KW - Competition KW - Efficiency DO - 10.26870/1