NBER Publications by Gerard Hoberg

We examine how product differentiation influences mergers and acquisitions and the ability of firms to exploit product market synergies. Using novel text-based analysis of firm 10K product descriptions, we find three key results. (1) Firms are more likely to enter restructuring transactions when the language describing their assets is similar to all other firms, consistent with their assets being more redeployable. (2) Targets earn lower announcement returns when similar alternative target firms exist. (3) Acquiring firms in competitive product markets experience increased profitability, higher sales growth, and increased changes in their product descriptions when they buy target firms that are similar to them and different from rival firms. Our findings are consistent with similar me...

We examine how product market competition affects firm cash flows and stock returns in industry booms and busts. In competitive industries, we find that high industry-level stock-market valuation, investment and new financing are followed by sharply lower operating cash flows and abnormal stock returns. We also find that analyst estimates are positively biased and returns comove more when industry valuations are high in competitive industries. In concentrated industries these relations are weak and generally insignificant. Our results suggest that when industry stock-market valuations are high, firms and investors in competitive industries do not fully internalize the negative externality of industry competition on cash flows and stock returns.