National borders are still strong barriers for mergers and acquisitions in Europe. We estimate a gravity equation model based on NUTS 2-regions and find that the restraining impact of national borders decreased by about a third between 1990 and 2007. However, there has been no significant change...

National borders continue to be strong barriers for mergers and acquisitions in Europe. Using regional data, we construct a gravity model and find that the restraining impact of national borders decreased by more than 20 percent between 1991 and 2007. However, no significant change has occurred...

This paper documents inefficient pricing in deal spreads of European M&A targets. Despite a heterogeneous takeover environment we find no significant difference between spreads of domestic and European cross-border transactions. This deal spread parity suggests an equivalent degree of arbitrage...

In the United States, on April 1, 2014, the set of rules commonly known as the "Volcker Rule", prohibiting proprietary trading activities in banks, became effective. The implementation of this rule took more than three years, as "proprietary trading" is an inherently vague concept, overlapping...

This paper analyzes Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) in Europe. We document various aspects associated with European SPACs by using a unique and hand-collected data sample encompassing all 19 SPACs which have been listed on European stock exchanges since 2005. The paper shows that...