Capturing the role of societal affinity in cross-border mergers with the Eurovision Song Contest

Citation

Siganos A & Tabner IT (2020) Capturing the role of societal affinity in cross-border mergers with the Eurovision Song Contest. Journal of International Business Studies, 51 (2), p. 263–273. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-019-00271-3

Abstract
This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of voting bias in the Eurovision Song Contest as a means of capturing societal affinity. More than 180 million viewers from more than 40 countries watch the Eurovision Song Contest every year and vote for their favorite songs. Societal affinity between participating countries leads to systematic bias in voting patterns as each song represents a country. Using cross-border mergers as a proxy for international business exchanges, we demonstrate how voting bias provides a simple, freely available, and dynamic means of capturing societal affinity between countries that complements other metrics of affinity and distance.

Keywords
Eurovision Song Contest; societal affinity; cross-border mergers

Journal
Journal of International Business Studies: Volume 51, Issue 2

• Accepted manuscript