Corruption includes rent‐seeking behavior by public officials (e.g., lavish in‐kind benefits and monetary kickbacks for contracts/permits/regulatory leniency, improper political contributions/support, etc.) that can negatively affect firm valuations, performances, and strategic choices. Shielding strategies are used to diminish rent‐seeking attractiveness of firms. Acquisitions provide a better channel than cash or leverage for assessing the wealth effects of shielding strategies. We find that the mean 3‐day announcement returns for acquirers for a large sample of U.S. domestic acquisitions between 1990 and 2014 is significantly lower for firms headquartered in relatively higher corruption states. Our results survive an array of robustness tests.

中文翻译：

---

政治腐败掩盖和公司收购

腐败包括公职人员的寻租行为（例如，大量的实物收益和对合同/许可/宽大处理的货币回扣，不当的政治捐款/支持等），这些行为可能会对公司的估值，业绩和战略选择产生负面影响。屏蔽策略用于减少企业的寻租吸引力。收购提供了比现金或杠杆更好的渠道来评估屏蔽策略的财富效应。我们发现，对于总部设在腐败程度相对较高的州的公司而言，在1990年至2014年之间进行的大量美国国内收购中，收购方的平均3天公告收益显着较低。我们的结果在一系列的稳健性测试中幸存下来。