Papers on “mergers and acquisitions”
Historical profile. Data snapshot: 2026-11-04. This profile is outside the current selection; the figures and research below are retained from that snapshot. Browse the directory for other profiles.
Research on “mergers and acquisitions” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers. Also as Markdown.
← Top research keywords · Keyword trends
Key findings#
- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “mergers and acquisitions” appeared in 1,079 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in finance (585), management (187) and economics (171).
- 119 of them were published in 2025, against 96 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (10), Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (9) and Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (9).
- The journals publishing most of them were Finance research letters (49), International Review of Economics & Finance (30) and International Review of Financial Analysis (27).
- The most-cited of them is “Does One Belt One Road initiative promote Chinese overseas direct investment?” (China Economic Review, 2017), with 562 citations.
Papers per year#
20172026 (so far)
| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finance | 57 | 50 | 52 | 57 | 71 | 57 | 53 | 68 | 63 | 57 |
| Management | 13 | 16 | 21 | 23 | 18 | 21 | 25 | 15 | 25 | 10 |
| Economics | 18 | 16 | 10 | 20 | 20 | 9 | 16 | 18 | 17 | 27 |
| Accounting | 2 | 11 | 3 | 7 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 13 | 11 | 12 |
| Operations Research | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Marketing | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| AI | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Tourism and Hospitality | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Information Systems | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Higher Education and Research | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| All categories | 96 | 99 | 92 | 113 | 123 | 101 | 109 | 120 | 119 | 107 |
Where the papers come from#
| # | Journal | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Finance research letters | 49 |
| 2 | International Review of Economics & Finance | 30 |
| 3 | International Review of Financial Analysis | 27 |
| 4 | Journal of Corporate Finance | 26 |
| 5 | Pacific-Basin Finance Journal | 19 |
| 6 | Long Range Planning | 17 |
| 7 | Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting | 16 |
| 8 | Journal of Business Research | 15 |
| 9 | Research in International Business and Finance | 12 |
| 10 | Journal of Banking & Finance | 11 |
| # | Institution | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shanghai University of Finance and Economics | 10 |
| 2 | Southwestern University of Finance and Economics | 9 |
| 3 | Zhongnan University of Economics and Law | 9 |
| 4 | Monash University | 8 |
| 5 | Central University of Finance and Economics | 7 |
| 6 | Jilin University | 7 |
| 7 | National University of Singapore | 7 |
| 8 | University of Southern Queensland | 7 |
| 9 | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies | 6 |
| 10 | Renmin University of China | 6 |
| # | Country | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 161 |
| 2 | United States | 112 |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 60 |
| 4 | Germany | 39 |
| 5 | Australia | 38 |
| 6 | Hong Kong | 22 |
| 7 | Taiwan | 20 |
| 8 | France | 19 |
| 9 | Italy | 18 |
| 10 | Canada | 14 |
| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | corporate governance | 66 |
| 2 | Chinese listed companies | 48 |
| 3 | information asymmetry | 35 |
| 4 | M&A performance | 29 |
| 5 | financial constraints | 29 |
| 6 | state-owned enterprises | 28 |
| 7 | China | 21 |
| 8 | acquisition premiums | 20 |
| 9 | post-merger performance | 18 |
Most-cited papers#
| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 562 | 5.1 | Does One Belt One Road initiative promote Chinese overseas direct investment? | China Economic Review | 2017-09-05 | Julan Du, Yifei Zhang |
| 2 | 367 | 3.1 | Do exogenous changes in passive institutional ownership affect corporate governance and firm value? | Journal of Financial Economics | 2017-01-18 | Cornelius Schmidt, Rüdiger Fahlenbrach |
| 3 | 346 | 3.7 | Failure and Success in Mergers and Acquisitions | Journal of Corporate Finance | 2019-01-01 | Luc D. R. Renneboog, Cara Vansteenkiste |
| 4 | 315 | 2.9 | Narcissism is a bad sign: CEO signature size, investment, and performance | Review of Accounting Studies | 2017-09-12 | Charles Ham, Nicholas Seybert, Sean Wang |
| 5 | 309 | 2.7 | The effects of financial development on foreign direct investment | Journal of Development Economics | 2017-03-03 | Rodolphe Desbordes, Shang‐Jin Wei |
Research ideas that follow this keyword#
Cite this page
Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “mergers and acquisitions”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/mergers-and-acquisitions
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-mergers-and-acquisitions,
author = {{Scholar4AI}},
title = {Papers on “mergers and acquisitions”},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/mergers-and-acquisitions}},
urldate = {2026-11-04},
note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}