This study aims to provide evidence of the impact of political factors of acquirer’s and target’s countries and their differences on cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) abandonment likelihood, showing that political differences have a more pronounced impact on M&A abandonment likelihood compared with social or cultural differences. We analyse a large cross-border M&A data sample under a probit regression, using target’s and acquirer’s score as well as score differences computed using the sum of squared differences. The results show that while analyzed target’s political factors don’t seem to have a statistically significant impact on M&A likelihood, level of efficiency and quality of government’s core institutions as well as political culture in acquirer’s country have statistically significant impact on M&A abandonment likelihood with the first having a greater marginal effect on the M&A abandonment likelihood than the second. We also document that political culture differences between acquirer’s and target’s countries have a greater explanatory power for M&A abandonment likelihood than the difference between acquirer’s and target’s Hofstede’s cultural dimension scores. This is true both in statistical and marginal terms, with the indulgence cultural dimension being the only statistically significant variable impacting M&A abandonment likelihood. These findings represent a useful groundwork for economists, corporate finance specialists, academic scholars and practitioners, potentially allowing for a better understanding of the underlying impact of political culture and the functioning of the acquirer’s and target’s country government on M&A deal outcome.

本研究旨在提供收购方和目标国政治因素对跨国并购放弃可能性的影响及其差异的证据，表明与社会或其他国家相比，政治差异对并购放弃可能性的影响更为显着。文化差异。我们使用目标方和收购方的分数以及使用平方差之和计算的分数差异，在概率回归下分析大型跨境并购数据样本。结果表明，虽然分析目标的政治因素似乎对并购可能性没有统计上的显着影响，政府核心机构的效率和质量水平以及收购方所在国的政治文化对并购放弃可能性具有统计上显着的影响，其中前者对并购放弃可能性的边际效应大于后者。我们还发现，收购方和目标国之间的政治文化差异对并购放弃可能性的解释力大于收购方和目标国霍夫斯泰德文化维度得分之间的差异。从统计和边际角度来看都是如此，放纵文化维度是影响并购放弃可能性的唯一具有统计显着性的变量。这些发现为经济学家、公司金融专家、学术学者和从业者提供了有用的基础，