The Effect of Foreign Acquisition on Employment and Wages: Evidence from Finnish Establishments

This paper examines the effect of foreign acquisition on wages and employment of different skill groups using panel data on Finnish establishments for 1988-2001. Exploiting the availability of a rich set of preacquisition controls, we use various regression and propensity-score matching methods. The results indicate that foreign acquisition has a positive effect on wages. The magnitude of this effect increases with the level of schooling of the workers. The wage increase is not immediate, but occurs within one to three years from the acquisition. The results also indicate that the acquisition decreases the share of highly educated workers in the plant's employment. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.