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 [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...