Date of Award

2020-01-01

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Theses & Dissertations (College of Business)

Advisor(s)

Richard Carrizosa

Second Advisor

Richard Cazier

Abstract

This study examines how accounting quality of target firms relates to the design of merger consideration in acquisition agreements. Prior literature suggests that acquirers mitigate adverse selection problems by making the value of merger consideration sensitive to the acquirers' merger announcement returns. Using a large sample of acquisition agreements of public merging parties between 1996 and 2017, I investigate whether high-quality accounting information of target firms helps acquirers mitigate adverse selection problems and in turn affects the sensitivity of merger consideration to the acquirers' merger announcement returns. I hypothesize and find that accounting quality of target firms is negatively related to the sensitivity of merger consideration to the acquirers' merger announcement returns. Additionally, this relation is more pronounced when acquirers have greater incentives to resolve adverse selection problems and less pronounced when acquirers can collect more information about targets from other sources. Collectively, my evidence suggests that high-quality accounting information of target firms helps acquirers resolve adverse selection problems and affects the design of merger consideration.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

56 pages

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Yuyun Zhou

Included in

Accounting Commons

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