Recent studies suggest the transfer of privileged information via social ties but do not explicitly examine the cost of these ties to shareholders. We document a significant, positive relation between stock transaction costs and a company's social ties to the investment community. Social ties...

We document an inverted-U relation between targetiveness (probability of being targeted) and firm size. However, this pattern describes stock offers and is more pronounced during hot markets with greater overvaluations. For cash offers we find a negative and monotonic relation. These contrasting...