Innovation, learning, and mergers and acquisitions in financial markets

Abstract

The importance of value innovation is emphasized in the literature. The tendency has been to take the stock market movement on the day of patent publication to proxy the value, ignoring the fact that knowledge is inter-connected and spillovers are prevailing. For this reason alone, theoretical and practical contributions to the value of innovation and its implications have been limited.

This thesis aims to shed light on these situations by focusing on the stock market. Specifically, we pose and seek to answer the following three questions: How does sectoral knowledge spillover affect the firm’s stock market valuation of innovation (Chapter 2)? How do firms’ technological substitutions and complementary affect mergers and acquisitions decisions in the stock market (Chapter 3)? and How does the mandatory disclosure regulation affect a firm’s investment and innovation decisions through the learning effect (Chapter 4)?

Date of Award	17 Mar 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Nottingham
Supervisor	Xiuping Hua (Supervisor) & Jingong Huang (Supervisor)