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Working Paper

Do Hostile Takeovers Reduce Extramarginal Wage Payments?

Hostile takeovers may have significant implications for long-term employment contracts if they facilitate the opportunistic expropriation of extramarginal wage payments. We test the expropriation hypothesis by studying the relationship between proxies for extramarginal wage payments and subsequent hostile takeover activity. This paper improves on existing research by using firm- and establishment-level data from a salary survey of employers. In addition, we observe characteristics of wage and employment structures both before and after the occurrence of a hostile takeover and hence can see whether the data are consistent with reductions in extramarginal wage payments following such takeovers. Results from this ex post experiment provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that hostile takeovers result in reductions of extramarginal wage payments to more-tenured workers, mostly through cutbacks in senior positions at firms with relatively steep wage profiles.

Working Papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded official Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Federal Reserve System.


Suggested Citation

Gokhale, Jagadeesh, Erica Groshen, and David Neumark. 1992. “Do Hostile Takeovers Reduce Extramarginal Wage Payments?” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper No. 92-15. https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-199215