Country-level institutional quality is positively correlated with the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). The association is strong for IPOs issued in developed markets, but nearly absent for emerging market IPOs. We hypothesize that extra-legal institutions, including financial...

Initial public offering (IPO) underpricing is positively correlated with managerial confidence. We hypothesize that highly overconfident managers, who tend to overvalue their own firm, use underpricing to signal their beliefs to the market in an effort to receive greater value for their shares...