Purpose – To test the effects of underpricing and share retention (i.e. the proportion of shares retained by the pre-initial-public-offering (IPO) owners) on IPO aftermarket liquidity. Design/methodology/approach – Uses both percentage spread and turnover ratio to measure liquidity. The...

Purpose – To test the effects of underpricing and share retention (i.e. the proportion of shares retained by the pre‐initial‐public‐offering (IPO) owners) on IPO aftermarket liquidity. Design/methodology/approach – Uses both percentage spread and turnover ratio to measure liquidity....

Booth and Chua (1996) hypothesize that IPOs are underpriced to promote ownership dispersion, which in turn increases aftermarket liquidity of IPO stocks. We examine a sample of 1,179 Nasdaq IPOs and find that underpricing is positively correlated with the number of non-block institutional...

Booth and Chua [Booth J., Chua L. Ownership dispersion, costly information, and IPO underpricing. Journal of Financial Economics 1996; 41; 291-310] hypothesize that IPOs are underpriced to promote ownership dispersion, which in turn increases aftermarket liquidity of IPO stocks. We examine a sample of...