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Cited by 452

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 45 of the 45 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Killer Acquisitions

Cunningham, Colleen, Ederer, Florian, Ma, Song·2021·Journal of Political Economy
DOI 10.1086/712506
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Abstract

This paper argues that incumbent firms may acquire innovative targets solely to discontinue the target’s innovation projects and preempt future competition. We call such acquisitions “killer acquisitions.” We develop a model illustrating this phenomenon. Using pharmaceutical industry data, we show that acquired drug projects are less likely to be developed when they overlap with the acquirer’s existing product portfolio, especially when the acquirer’s market power is large because of weak competition or distant patent expiration. Conservative estimates indicate that 5.3%–7.4% of acquisitions in our sample are killer acquisitions. These acquisitions disproportionately occur just below thresholds for antitrust scrutiny.

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Registry

Crossref · 10.1086/712506

Cites

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Metadata

Authors
Cunningham, C., Ederer, F., & Ma, S.
Venue
Journal of Political Economy
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Published
2021-03-01
Volume
129
Issue
3
Pages
649-702
ISSN
  • 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-534X
DOI
10.1086/712506
OpenAlex
W4231991048
Cited by
452
References
45
FWCI
39.30
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Killer Acquisitions. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/712506
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Cunningham, C., Ederer, F., & Ma, S. (2021). Killer Acquisitions. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/712506

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.