Abstract: With the advancement of globalization, cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) play an increasingly important role in global output. Most of the existing study on the influencing factors of cross-border M&As is carried out from the perspective of enterprise-level or industry-level characteristics, and the effects of macroeconomic are ignored. This study uses Copula entropy to screen out the economic factors that are closely related to the volume of Chinese cross-border M&As, and then uses the vector autoregressive model and the error correction model to focus on the dynamic impact of these economic factors on the trend of cross-border M&A activities of Chinese enterprises. We find that Chinese economic growth rate, macroeconomic liquidity, macroeconomic risks and exchange rates are four important economic variables that affect enterprises’ cross-border M&A decisions, and the degree of influence of each economic variable varies. Positive swing in economic growth will promote Chinese overseas M&A business in the short term, while it will turn into a weak negative impact in the long run. We get management implications for both investors and policymakers from empirical studying, which is particularly essential in the post Covid-19 period for correctly guiding Chinese enterprises to actively explore their overseas market and regain the momentum of cross-border investment.

Key words: cross-border mergers and acquisitions, macroeconomic shocks, Copula entropy, error correction models, impulse response analysis