A reverse merger takes place when a public company, commonly known as a “shell”, acquires a private operating company through a share exchange transaction. The public shell typically has no business operations, but is valuable because of its public trading status. Post-merger, the operating...

We build a model of an IPO for firms with private information about their earnings profile over time and test the model’s predictions using a complete sample of newly listed Chinese companies between 1992 and 2007. The model predicts that IPO size is positively correlated with short-term...