Access to unique knowledge of a target firm is the strategic rationale for many firm acquisitions with the expectation of improving the acquirer's innovation performance. We argue that the acquisition price reflects opportunities for value creation through innovation and investigate whether acquirers pay not just for the target firm's knowledge but also for the opportunity to access localized knowledge when targets are embedded in the knowledge flows of their region. Accordingly, we integrate embeddedness theory with literature on the expectations for knowledge-based value creation in M&A. We hypothesize that target firms that are highly embedded in local knowledge flows have higher acquisition prices. Using data on 520 technology-oriented firm acquisitions in Europe between 2001 and 2010, we find that the acquisition price increases with the target firm's local embeddedness. The effects are weaker when an acquirer's knowledge base is closely related to the localized knowledge and stronger when the target's knowledge base is closely related to the localized knowledge, suggesting that local embeddedness conditions the ability of acquirer and target to absorb localized knowledge.

获得目标公司的独特知识是许多公司收购的战略依据，期望提高收购方的创新绩效。我们认为，收购价格反映了通过创新创造价值的机会，并调查收购方是否不仅为目标公司的知识付费，而且当目标公司嵌入其所在地区的知识流中时，是否也为获得本地化知识的机会付费。因此，我们将嵌入理论与关于并购中基于知识的价值创造预期的文献相结合。我们假设高度嵌入本地知识流的目标公司具有更高的收购价格。使用 2001 年至 2010 年间欧洲 520 家以技术为导向的公司收购的数据，我们发现收购价格随着目标公司在当地的嵌入而增加。当收购方的知识库与本地化知识密切相关时效果较弱，而当目标的知识库与本地化知识密切相关时效果较强，这表明本地嵌入性决定了收购方和目标吸收本地化知识的能力。