反倾销如何影响了跨国并购

当前,贸易壁垒对中国构建更高层次的开放型经济体制造成了多重复杂影响。基于中国微观企业跨国并购以及反倾销微观案件数据,本文全面探究了反倾销贸易壁垒对跨国并购的影响效应与作用机制。通过多种稳健性估计发现,国家、行业不同层面反倾销壁垒,对企业跨国并购规模、并购数量具有显著的抑制效应。进一步分析发现,反倾销贸易壁垒有助于企业规避特定国家政策冲击,进而对企业跨国并购成功率具有一定带动效应;反倾销贸易壁垒加大了“上下游企业”并购协同成本,显著抑制了跨行业并购;反倾销对企业跨国并购的多重影响,与一国行业贸易竞争力降低存在显著关联。因此,要全面理性分析反倾销带来的跨国并购障碍与风险,制定符合企业自身的并购策略,积极利用同行业协同并购优势,规避贸易壁垒带来的负向冲击。

How Anti-dumping Affects Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions

In recent years, global economic growth has slowed, and anti-dumping trade barriers have become increasingly common measures for trade protection. Uncertainty in the external environment of global economic development has intensified. According to China's Ministry of Commerce, in 2020, Chinese exports were subject to 132 trade remedy investigations in 28 countries (regions), involving approximately 13.1 billion U.S. dollars. At the same time, Chinese companies' cross-border M&A have been undergoing a rapid development trend. According to the UNCTAD World Investment Report 2020, China's foreign direct investment flow in 2019 was 136.91 billion U.S. dollars, the second highest in the world. It has ranked in the top three in the world for 8 consecutive years. Cross-border M&A have become the main form of foreign direct investment by Chinese companies. Therefore, whether the trade barriers encountered by China have led to the rapid growth of corporate cross-border M&A, and how companies should rationally identify and respond to the opportunities and risks of cross-border M&A brought about by trade barriers are urgent questions with both theoretical and policy implications.Trade barriers have multiple effects on enterprises' foreign direct investment. Current theories suggest that cross-border capital flows are complete substitutes for international trade, and capital flows mainly come from trade barriers. Early research on Japanese samples shows that anti-dumping regulations promote multinational investment by Japanese companies in Europe and the United States, and companies use cross-border M&A to replace product exports, thereby saving transportation costs and tariff costs (Belderbos, 1997; Barrell and Pain, 1999). However, other studies find that strong trade barriers strongly control the foreign investment of enterprises. Given the various forms of internationalization available to enterprises from countries that are the target of trade frictions, the host country often adopts the “full caution” principle, making it possible for enterprises to cross trade through investment more difficult to achieve. Only multinational companies in developed countries tend to use cross-border M&A to circumvent anti-dumping policies. From the perspective of industry, technology-intensive industries are more likely to adopt cross-border M&A in response to anti-dumping regulations than labor-intensive industries. Based on the Thomson Financial Mergers and Acquisitions (SDC) database, this paper uses a sample of Chinese companies' cross-border M&A and the World Bank's anti-dumping database to comprehensively examine the impact of anti-dumping regulations on cross-border M&A. This paper makes three innovations. First, the literature focuses on the macro levels of country and industry, and from this view there are few studies of how anti-dumping regulations affect enterprises' cross-border M&A. By constructing multi-level anti-dumping and cross-border indicators of M&A, this paper comprehensively considers the effectiveness and internal influence mechanisms of micro-enterprises' use of cross-border M&A as a response to anti-dumping regulations, and it effectively enriches and expands related fields. Second, this paper finds that contrary to the literature, anti-dumping regulations do not directly induce corporate cross-border M&A but have a significant cross-industry and cross-“host country” inhibitory effect. Third, there are few studies of the relationships between the scale, effectiveness, and type of cross-border M&A and the relationship between anti-dumping and cross-border M&A, and this paper shows that the dimensional indicators influence each other in complicated ways. As a result, this paper provides a foundation for further research on the incentive effects of trade barriers.