Distance is a key factor constraining traditional cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). However, with the boom in cross-border digital M&As triggered by digital technological transformation, one view holds that advances in digital technologies have made the world “flat”, so that distance is no longer important for cross-border digital M&As; the other view argues that digital technologies may make cross-border digital M&As more sensitive to distance. To resolve this debate, this paper uses global data on cross-border digital M&As and adopts the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimation method to systematically answer the following two questions: (1) Does distance still affect cross-border digital M&As? (2) How do digital technologies affect the relationship between distance and cross-border digital M&As?

The study finds that increases in geographic and institutional distance significantly and robustly inhibit the flow of cross-border digital M&As. The main reason is that greater distance intensifies the costs of digital M&As and amplifies political risks in the digital context. Moreover, the inhibiting effect of distance varies with the stage of economic development, the level of distance, the cultural context, and the type of digital M&As. Although digital technologies can weaken the negative effect of geographic distance, they cannot alleviate the inhibiting effect of institutional distance.

This paper makes the following contributions: First, it is the first to use a large global sample to systematically test the decisive impact of distance on the emerging phenomenon of cross-border digital M&As, thus providing new evidence on the determinants of cross-border digital M&As. Second, it reveals the important impact of geographic and institutional distance on cross-border digital M&As, and explains the mechanisms from both costs and risks induced by distance, thereby extending the research on the relationship between distance and cross-border investment. Third, it examines the heterogeneous effects from the stage of economic development, cultural distance, and the level of distance, and analyzes the moderating effect of digital technologies, thus more comprehensively revealing the contexts where distance affects cross-border digital M&As in the era of the digital economy, and providing useful implications for enterprises to optimize the location choices of cross-border digital M&As and for governments to improve digital governance and international investment policies.