Examines the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) and the impact of this underpricing on investor uncertainty and on the investment bankers who take the firms public. The firms going public lack the credibility to assert that the offering price is below the expected market price...

Suggests a model to explain underpricing at the IPO by high-quality firms as a signal to investors at the expense of low-quality firms. In contrast to Rock's (1986) equilibrium model suggesting firms underprice reluctantly, this model follows in the vein of more recent models (Nanda 1989 and...