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Title: Cross-Country Differences in the Effects of Private Equity Buyouts: The Role of Regulations

Abstract: Private equity buyout activity has increased significantly over the past decades, and continues to grow. The academic literature studying its economic effects is on balance positive, documenting increased growth and improved productivity at target firms. Policymakers tend to emphasize the negative effects of buyouts however, and there is frequently talk of subjecting the sector to tighter regulation in order to temper these perceived excesses. Using homogenous cross-country data, I investigate how the economic effects of buyouts interact with regulations in Europe. In preliminary results, I find that employment grows at target firms when compared to matched control firms. I furthermore find indicative evidence of this growth declining with the stringency of labor regulations. In ongoing work, I seek to leverage the heterogeneous effects of buyouts documented in previous research and apply my research design to settings where regulations are hypothesized to have a different bite.