We investigate the effect of labor unionization on industry-level takeover activity after negative economy-wide shocks. Focusing on the 2008 financial crisis, we find that merger intensities drop significantly during the post-crisis period, though the degree of unionization in an industry...

We investigate the effects of target initiation in mergers and acquisitions. We find target-initiated deals are common and that important motives for these deals are target economic weakness, financial constraints, and negative economy-wide shocks. We determine that average takeover premia,...