Graduation Year

2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Business Administration

Major Professor

Christos Pantzalis, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Jung Chul Park, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Daniel Bradley, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Ninon Sutton, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Dahlia Robinson, Ph.D.

Keywords

Migration flows, Stock return comovement, Market efficiency, Merger and acquisition

Abstract

In the first essay, I examine stock market implications of state-to-state migration flows that are known to provide the basis for social and business networks. I observe sizeable and robust excess return comovement between migration-flow receiving and sending states at both the individual stock and the state portfolio levels. Although I find that migration flows are associated with firms’ business activities, this comovement is not fully explained by economic fundamentals and decreases substantially when firms relocate to other states. In line with the view that migration networks form the basis for a common investor base for receiving and sending states stocks, I find that a) receiving states account for a significant portion of sending states stocks’ trading volume, and b) migration comovement is strongly correlated with the percent of local population born in migration states and more prevalent in states where retail investors display “old home” bias in addition to local bias. Moreover, consistent with the view that migration comovement may be rooted in sentiment shared by a common investor base, I find that it coexists with mispricing, measured by stock return reversals.

In the second essay, I test whether takeover targets are more likely to be connected to bidders via domestic migration network by relating acquisitions with the availability of social and business networks formed via interstate migration flows. I find that targets are more likely to be from the migration sending states when migration networks are sturdier. Additionally, I find that targets are more likely to be from migration sending states with stronger migration network a) when acquirer and targets are in different industries, b) when migration network involves non-neighboring states, and c) when targets are small. The results are consistent with the notion that information advantage is at least a partial explanation of firms’ propensity to choose targets from migration sending states, especially when information asymmetry about target is more pronounced. Moreover, I find that takeover premium is smaller and acquirer announcement returns are higher when migration sending states targets are small with low institutional ownership, which substantiate the view that migration networks present enhanced accessibility of soft information to acquirers and that the effect of such information advantage is valuable when there is substantial degree of information asymmetry regarding targets.

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