The Wage Premium of Foreign Ownership: Evidence from European Mergers and Acquisitions

The authors provide evidence on the impact of foreign ownership on labor market outcomes analyzing pay differences between foreign-acquired and domestically owned firms. For this purpose, they use firm-level data from 16 European countries over the time period 19992006. Combing propensity score matching techniques with difference-in-differences (DID) estimators the authors estimate positive wage premia of cross-border merger and acquisitions (M&As), suggesting that foreign-acquired firms exhibit higher short-run (post-acquisition) wage growth than their domestic counterparts. The observed wage disparities are most pronounced for low paying firms (with average wages below the median) which are typically located in Eastern European transition economies.