NBER Publications by Wenjie Chen

This paper examines the recent upsurge in foreign acquisitions of U.S. firms, specifically focusing on acquisitions made by firms located in emerging markets. Neoclassical theory predicts that, on net, capital should flow from countries that are capital-abundant to countries that are capital-scarce. Yet increasingly emerging market firms are acquiring assets in developed countries. Using transaction-specific acquisition data and firm-level accounting data we evaluate the post-acquisition performance of publicly traded U.S. firms that have been acquired by firms from emerging markets over the period 1980-2007. Our empirical methodology uses a difference-in-differences approach combined with propensity score matching to create an appropriate control group of non-acquired firms. The results s...