《Research on the impact of digital mergers and acquisitions on firms’ labor demand》data

Using M&A data and recruitment data for listed firms from 2014 to 2022, this study examines the impact of digital M&A on firms’ labor demand. Firm-level data are obtained from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) database and the Tianyancha corporate information database, while regional-level baseline data are collected from the official websites of local statistical bureaus. Firm-level recruitment data are drawn from online job postings of listed companies scraped from four major Chinese recruitment platforms, namely Liepin, 51job, Zhilian Zhaopin, and 58.com. The raw data are screened as follows: (1) only completed M&A transactions are retained; (2) ST and *ST firms are excluded; (3) observations with missing values for key variables are dropped; and (4) if an acquiring firm conducts multiple acquisitions within the same year, those transactions are consolidated. After applying the above screening criteria, the final sample consists of 7,632 observations. On the basis of the above preprocessing, all continuous variables are winsorized at the 1% level.