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Cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have gained popularity over the last two decades (Erel, Liao, & Weisbach, 2012). They have become a dominant form of foreign direct investment in world economy (Zhu, 2011). Research on this type of expansion strategy, however, has not kept pace with this trend and it is highly fragmented, leaving gaps that need to be addressed (Collins et al., 2009). The area of cross-border acquisitions in Central and Eastern Europe, which is also of interest in this paper, represents such a gap.

Research and development (R&D) is of fundamental importance in the creation of knowledge, products and technologies (Solow, 1956; Jones, 1995; Köhler et al., 2012; OECD, 2012; Szarowská, 2016; 2017). Generally, governments have three main instruments for financing R&D (own R&D, direct funding and indirect funding), each of which has advantages and disadvantages from the perspective of economic theory (David et al., 2000). The financial crisis prompted many governments to introduce tough fiscal consolidation measures and to prioritize other issues over R&D. However, Hud and Hussinger (2015) note that to prevent firms from reducing their R&D expenses and to maintain national R&D capacities, policymakers in many countries reacted immediately to the crisis and increased the public R&D budget.

According to Shah (2015), economic growth is a primary and crucial aim of national and regional economies. International trade, based on exploitation of the benefits of comparative advantage, is treated as one of the key Determinants of a sustainable economic growth. Being a structural part of the overal international trade, the international trade in agricultural products is an important engine of economic progress. Despite the abundance of the scientific studies proving the positive links between international trade and national and/or regional economic growth (Sun & Heshmati, 2010; Adhikary, 2010; Busse & Koniger, 2012; Fetahi-Vehapia & Sadikub, 2015; Vojtovic, 2016; Kljucnikov & Popesko, 2017; Weng et al., 2017, Simionescu et al., 2017 etc.), the international trade in agricultural products thus far has not earned the sufficient scientific attention.

Family businesses all over the world are suffering from long-term survival problems (Miller et al., 2004; Salvato & Leif, 2008) despite financially outperforming in the short run (Dyer, 2006; Villalonga & Amit, 2006). Meanwhile, general business literature agrees that if a business outperforms in accumulating more resources in the short run, it has a greater propensity to sustain in the long run (Efrat & Shoham, 2012). In this case, despite the diverse ideologies, the short term in this paper is termed to be less than three years. The simple question arising from these two research findings is why family businesses are not as sustainable in the long run if they can outperform in the short run?

Rising income inequality is a growing concern for governments due to its adverse effect on the poverty level, income distribution, social and institutional stability, which in turn impede the economic growth and may lead to political instability. Taxation has long been regarded as the key instrument in a fiscal policy to reduce income inequality via the redistribution of tax revenues to finance public goods and to correct for market-income inequality (Atkinson, 1991). Although prior studies have extensively investigated the effect of taxation on income inequality (Martinez-Vazquez et al., 2012), the findings are inconclusive especially in developing countries (Bird & Zolt, 2014).