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Underpricing of IPOs: Firm-, issue- and country-specific characteristics

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  • Engelen, Peter-Jan
  • van Essen, Marc

Abstract

Using a large firm-level dataset of 2920 IPOs from 21 countries we examine the impact of country-level institutional characteristics on the underpricing of IPOs. Through hierarchical linear modeling we are able to control for firm-specific and issue-specific characteristics and test whether country-specific institutional characteristics add explanatory power to explain the level of underpricing. Our results show that about 10% of the variation in the level of underpricing is between countries. The quality of a country's legal framework, as measured by its level of investor protection, the overall quality of its legal system and its level of legal enforcement, reduces the level of underpricing significantly.

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  • Engelen, Peter-Jan & van Essen, Marc, 2010. "Underpricing of IPOs: Firm-, issue- and country-specific characteristics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1958-1969, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:34:y:2010:i:8:p:1958-1969
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