IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11197.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Firms Go Public to Raise Capital?

Author

Listed:
  • Woojin Kim
  • Michael Weisbach

Abstract

This paper considers the question of whether raising capital is an important reason why firms go public. Using a sample of 16,958 initial public offerings from 38 countries between 1990 and 2003, we consider differences between firms that sell new, primary shares to the public, and existing secondary shares that previously belonged to insiders. Our results suggest that the sale of primary shares is correlated with a number of factors associated with the firm's demand for capital. In particular, issuance of primary shares is correlated with higher increases of investment, higher repayment of debt and increases in cash, and more subsequent capital-raising through seasoned equity offers. Since 79% of all capital raised through IPOs in our sample is from the sale of primary shares, we conclude that capital-raising is an important motive in the going-public decision.

Suggested Citation

  • Woojin Kim & Michael Weisbach, 2005. "Do Firms Go Public to Raise Capital?," NBER Working Papers 11197, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11197
    Note: CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11197.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marco Pagano & Fabio Panetta & and Luigi Zingales, 1998. "Why Do Companies Go Public? An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(1), pages 27-64, February.
    2. Ansgar Belke & Friedrich Schneider, 2003. "Privatization in Austria: Some Theoretical Reasons and First Results About the Privatization Proceeds," Diskussionspapiere aus dem Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Hohenheim 229/2003, Department of Economics, University of Hohenheim, Germany.
    3. Ritter, Jay R, 1991. " The Long-run Performance of Initial Public Offerings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 3-27, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chahine, Salim, 2008. "Underpricing versus gross spread: New evidence on the effect of sold shares at the time of IPOs," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 180-196, April.
    2. Brau, James C. & Li, Mingsheng & Shi, Jing, 2007. "Do secondary shares in the IPO process have a negative effect on aftermarket performance?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 2612-2631, September.
    3. Richard J. Rosen & Scott B. Smart & Chad J. Zutter, 2005. "Why do firms go public? evidence from the banking industry," Working Paper Series WP-05-17, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    4. Manfred Borchert, "undated". "The Impact of Banking Behaviour on Monetary Strategy in Europe," Working Papers 201160, Institute of Spatial and Housing Economics, Munster Universitary.
    5. Franck Bancel & Usha R. Mittoo, 2013. "Survey evidence: what do we know about European and US firms’ motivations for going public?," Chapters,in: Handbook of Research on IPOs, chapter 3, pages 57-75 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Kashefi Pour, Eilnaz & Lasfer, Meziane, 2013. "Why do companies delist voluntarily from the stock market?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 4850-4860.
    7. Mayur, Manas & Kumar, Manoj, 2006. "An Empirical Investigation of Going Public Decision of Indian Companies," MPRA Paper 1801, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Borchert, Manfred, 2005. "The impact of banking behaviour on monetary strategy in Europe," Beiträge zur angewandten Wirtschaftsforschung 13, University of Münster, Center of Applied Economic Research Münster (CAWM).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance
    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11197. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: () or (Joanne Lustig). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.