Hello,

I have a question that is a bit general, but hopefully somebody can help me since I’m quite stuck on this. It’s regarding my thesis.

My dependent variable is the amount of patents assigned by an acquirer after an M&A. I want to measure this 1, 2, 3 and 4 years after the M&A year. To illustrate, the amount of the acquirers patents in 2009 could be influenced by M&As in 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005.

The independent variables are (1) the amount of patents that the target obtained up to 5 years prior to the M&A. And (2) the relatedness between these patents and the acquirer’s patents. These are both count data. So then I will measure the effect that acquiring targets with a lot of patents has on generating more patents of the acquirer.
I want to measure this over multiple years. So I will not only look at 2009, but also 2010 and 2011.

The part that I find complicated is that one firm can acquire several targets in one year. Could I make an identifier per M&A event for each acquirer? I saw some mentions of this on the forum but I don’t know if and how I could apply it here.

Any suggestions are welcome.
Thanks in advance,

Jelle
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