We explain why initial underpricing of new issue exists globally and is not arbitraged away in an efficient market. We argue that initial underpricing is a natural by-product of liquidity-motivated ownership dispersion requirements and divergence of opinion. In our framework, as shares are...

We analyze and compare the underpricing and buy-and-hold abnormal returns of depositary receipt equity offerings with preceding domestic seasoned equity offerings of the same firms to identify differences and motivations for cross-listings and domestic equity offerings free of any matching bias....