intangible capital , mergers and acquisitions , employment , failure tolerance
Abstract:
The growing importance of intangible capital---such as knowledge and human capital---has fundamentally reshaped modern firms and capital markets. As these assets are opaque, embedded, and difficult to measure, understanding how firms manage them is central to corporate finance. This dissertation examines three key phases in the life cycle of intangible capital: transaction, internal reallocation, and production.
The first chapter studies mergers and acquisitions as settings in which otherwise opaque intangible assets become partially revealed. I show that acquisitions aimed at addressing technological gaps can trigger negative stock market reactions, consistent with acquisition announcements updating beliefs about the acquirer's underlying capabilities. These findings suggest that announcement returns reflect not only deal value but also revaluation triggered by information revelation.
The second chapter examines how firms reallocate human-embedded intangible capital across geographic regions. Using detailed administrative data, I document that multi-location firms shift employment across regions in response to differences in local labor market conditions. This evidence highlights the role of organizational structure in enabling the efficient deployment of intangible resources.
The third chapter studies the production of intangible capital by analyzing how firms convert employee knowledge into patentable innovation. I develop a novel measure of firms' tolerance for failure and show that greater tolerance increases innovation quality but reduces innovation quantity, revealing a trade-off in incentive design.
Taken together, the three chapters offer a unified perspective on how firms create, move, and transact intangible capital. The findings underscore that corporate strategy and organizational choices fundamentally shape the production and allocation of intangible assets in the modern economy.
Dieser Eintrag ist Teil der Universitätsbibliographie.
Das Dokument wird vom Publikationsserver der Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim bereitgestellt.
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