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....

We find a negative relation between democracy and initial public offering (IPO) underpricing for a sample of 23,050 IPOs across 45 countries. The effect of democracy on underpricing is weaker for IPOs audited by Big 4 auditing firms, backed by venture capital firms, and with better disclosure...