The Initial Return and Its Conditional Return Volatility: Evidence from the Chinese IPO Market

This paper investigates the monthly initial return and its conditional return volatility for Chinese IPOs. We find that the mean initial return (IR) and cross-sectional return volatility are highly auto- and cross-correlated, and time-varying. We propose a system of two simultaneous equations: a GARCH-in-mean (GARCH-M) process with an ARMA(1,1) adjustment in the residuals for the IR and an EGARCH process for the conditional return volatility, assuming that the IR and its conditional return volatility are linear functions of the same market, firm- and offer-specific characteristics. We find that the model captures both time-series and cross-sectional correlations at the mean and variance levels. Our findings suggest that the conditional return volatility affects the IR positively and significantly, in addition to the traditional market, firm- and offer-specific characteristics. IPOs with higher conditional return volatility, as a proxy for information asymmetry, tend to be underpriced more. The paper demonstrates the merit of using a conditional variance model, along with time series and cross-sectional analysis to price Chinese IPOs.