We study the impact of country-level short selling constraints on IPO underpricing. Examining 17,151 IPOs from 36 countries, we find that IPO underpricing tends to be greater in countries that ban short selling or security lending and in countries where short selling is not practiced....

We propose an “M&A activity” hypothesis as a partial explanation for IPO underpricing. When going public during active corporate control markets, managers may take actions intended to safeguard their control. In support of this conjecture, we find that pre-IPO M&A activity directly explains...