I use the staggered adoption of state-level antitakeover laws to provide causal evidence that managerial agency problems reduce the allocative efficiency of conglomerate firms. I find that increases in control slack following the passage of antitakeover laws reduces q-sensitivity of investment by 64%. The adverse impact of the laws appears mostly at conglomerate firms that benefited from disciplinary takeover threats prior to the passage of the laws, lacked alternative sources of pressure on management, or had the structural makings to fuel wasteful influence activities and power struggles among managers. These findings suggest that takeover threats impact the efficiency of resource allocation.

我使用州级反收购法的交错采用来提供因果证据，证明管理代理问题降低了集团公司的配置效率。我发现反收购法通过后控制松弛的增加将投资的q敏感性降低了 64%。法律的不利影响主要出现在集团公司，这些公司在法律通过之前从纪律接管威胁中受益，缺乏对管理层的替代压力来源，或者具有助长浪费性影响活动和管理人员之间权力斗争的结构性因素。这些发现表明，收购威胁会影响资源分配的效率。