The Berger-Ofek Diversification Discount is Just Poor Firm Matching


Journal article


John Hund, Don Monk, Sheri Tice
Critical Finance Review, vol. 13(1), 2024, pp. 1-44


Cite

Cite

APA   Click to copy
Hund, J., Monk, D., & Tice, S. (2024). The Berger-Ofek Diversification Discount is Just Poor Firm Matching. Critical Finance Review, 13(1), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1561/104.00000135


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Hund, John, Don Monk, and Sheri Tice. “The Berger-Ofek Diversification Discount Is Just Poor Firm Matching.” Critical Finance Review 13, no. 1 (2024): 1–44.


MLA   Click to copy
Hund, John, et al. “The Berger-Ofek Diversification Discount Is Just Poor Firm Matching.” Critical Finance Review, vol. 13, no. 1, 2024, pp. 1–44, doi:10.1561/104.00000135.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{john2024a,
  title = {The Berger-Ofek Diversification Discount is Just Poor Firm Matching},
  year = {2024},
  issue = {1},
  journal = {Critical Finance Review},
  pages = {1-44},
  volume = {13},
  doi = {10.1561/104.00000135},
  author = {Hund, John and Monk, Don and Tice, Sheri}
}

Link to paper on Critical Finance Review website here.

Abstract
The widely used measure of diversification value developed by Berger and Ofek (1995) consistently matches large and old diversified firms with small and young focused firms. Since valuation multiples decline with sales and age this approach manufactures a discount. We develop a new measure based on sales and age matching and show that it leads to different and more intuitive conclusions. Using daily returns, we con- clude that sales and age matched firms are more than twice as correlated with diversified firms than firms chosen by the Berger and Ofek (1995) methodology and the return-weighted discount is zero. For most firms, the diversification discount is an artifact of the methods used to create it.