We review the theory and evidence on IPO activity: why firms go public, why they reward first-day investors with considerable underpricing, and how IPOs perform in the long run. Our perspective is threefold: First, we believe that many IPO phenomena are not stationary. Second, we believe research into share allocation issues is the most promising area of research in IPOs at the moment. Third, we argue that asymmetric information is not the primary driver of many IPO phenomena.

Award at the 2005 European Finance Association Meeting, to the retail broker and discount

Motivated by the behavior of asset prices, trading volume and price volatility during historical episodes of asset price bubbles, we present a continuous time equilibrium model where overconfidence generates disagreements among agents regarding asset fundamentals. With short-sale constraints, an asset owner has an option to sell the asset to other overconfident agents when they have more optimistic beliefs. As in Harrison and Kreps (1978), this re-sale option has a recursive structure, that is, a buyer of the asset gets the option to resell it. Agents pay prices that exceed their own valuation of future dividends because they believe that in the future they will find a buyer willing to pay even more. This causes a significant bubble component in asset prices even when small differences of beliefs are sufficient to generate a trade. In equilibrium, large bubbles are accompanied by large trading volume and high price volatility. Our model has an explicit solution, which allows for several comparative statics exercises. Our analysis shows that while Tobin’s tax can substantially reduce speculative trading when transaction costs are small, it has only a limited impact on the size of the bubble or on price volatility. We also give an example where the price of a subsidiary is larger than its parent firm. This paper was previously circulated under the title “Overconfidence, Short-Sale Constraints and Bubbles.”

We survey 401 financial executives, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 20, to determine the key factors that drive decisions related to reported earnings and voluntary disclosure. The majority of firms view earnings, especially EPS, as the key metric for outsiders, even more so than cash flows. Because of the severe market reaction to missing an earnings target, we find that firms are willing to sacrifice economic value in order to meet a short-run earnings target. The preference for smooth earnings is so strong that 78 % of the surveyed executives would give up economic value in exchange for smooth earnings. We find that 55 % of managers would avoid initiating a very positive NPV project if it meant falling short of the current quarter’s consensus earnings. Missing an earnings target or reporting volatile earnings is thought to reduce the predictability of earnings, which in turn reduces stock price because investors and analysts hate uncertainty. We also find that managers make voluntary disclosures to reduce information risk associated with their stock but try to avoid setting a disclosure precedent that will be difficult to maintain. In general, management’s views provide support for stock price motivations for earnings management and voluntary disclosure, but provide only modest evidence in support of other

We especially thank an anonymous referee and Rob Stambaugh, the editor, for helpful suggestions that greatly improved the article. Andrew Ang and Bob Hodrick both acknowledge support from the NSF.

The paper discusses the current state of the behavioral finance literature. I argue that more direct evidence on investors ’ actions and expectations would make existing theories more convincing to outsiders and would help sort among behavioral theories for a given asset pricing phenomenon. Furthermore, evidence on the dependence of a given bias on investor wealth/sophistication would be useful for determining if the bias could be due to (fixed) information or transactions costs or is likely to require a behavioral explanation, and for determining which biases are likely to be most important for asset prices. I analyze a novel data set on investor expectations and actions obtained from UBS PaineWebber/Gallup. The data suggest that, even for high wealth investors, expected returns were high at the peak of the market, many investors thought the market was overvalued but would not correct quickly, and investors ’ beliefs depend strongly on their own investment experience. I then review evidence on the dependence of a series of “irrational ” investor behaviors on investor wealth and conclude that many such behaviors diminish substantially with wealth. As an example of the cost needed to explain a particular type of “irrational”

We provide evidence that stocks with higher dispersion in analysts ’ earnings forecasts earn lower future returns than otherwise similar stocks. This effect is most pronounced in small stocks and stocks that have performed poorly over the past year. Interpreting dispersion in analysts ’ forecasts as a proxy for differences in opinion about a stock, we show that this evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that prices will reflect the optimistic view whenever investors with the lowest valuations do not trade. By contrast, our evidence is inconsistent with a view that dispersion in analysts ’ forecasts proxies for risk. IN THIS PAPER WE ANALYZE THE ROLE of dispersion in analysts ’ earnings forecasts in predicting the cross section of future stock returns. We find that stocks with higher dispersion in analysts ’ earnings forecasts earn significantly lower future returns than otherwise similar stocks. In particular, a portfolio of stocks in the highest quintile of dispersion underperforms a portfolio of stocks in the lowest quintile of dispersion by 9.48 percent per year. This effect is

Building on recent developments in behavioral asset pricing, we develop a model in which an increase in the dispersion of investor beliefs under short-selling constraints predicts a rise in stock price above its fundamental value, or bubble. The model predicts managers respond to bubbles by issuing new equity and increasing capital expenditures. We test these predictions (among others) using the variance of analysts’ earnings forecasts – a proxy for the dispersion of investor beliefs – to identify the “bubble ” component in Tobin’s Q. We document the dynamic response to bubble shocks using a panel data VAR. Using recursive orderings of the VAR for additional identification, we …nd that orthogonalized bubble shocks have positive and statistically significant effects on Tobin’s Q, net equity issuance, and real investment, consistent with the predictions of the model.

This paper develops a test of under-reaction to news induced by the presence of investors who display the tendency to realize gains and ride losses, known as the disposition effect. The disposition effect, a widely documented fact in investor behavior, implies that stock prices underreact more to bad news when more current holders are facing a capital loss, and under-react more to good news when more current holders are facing a capital gain. I use a database of mutual funds holdings to construct a measure of reference prices for individual stocks. Using this novel measure of reference price, I show that post-event predictability is most severe when the disposition effect predicts the biggest under-reaction. I show that exposure to a disposition variable spreads the cross-sectional differences in post-event returns: post-event drift is bigger when the news and the capital gains overhang have the same sign and the magnitude of the post-event drift is directly related to the amount of unrealized capital gains (losses) experienced by the stock holders prior to the event date.

Our model of the initial public offering process links the three main empirical IPO ‘anomalies’ – underpricing, hot issue markets, and long-run underperformance – and traces them to a common source of inefficiency. We relate hot IPO markets (such as the 1999/2000 market for Internet IPOs) to the presence of a class of investors who are ‘irrational’ in the sense of having exuberant expectations regarding future performance. Underpricing and long-run underperformance emerge as underwriters attempt to maximize profits from the sale of equity, at the expense of these exuberant investors. Underpricing serves to compensate regular IPO investors for their role in restricting the supply of available shares and maintaining prices. The model is shown to be consistent with many aspects of the IPO process. It also generates a number of new empirical predictions.