How Should a Firm Go Public? A Dynamic Model of the Choice between Fixed-Price Offerings and Auctions in IPOs and Privatizations*
研究了企业在IPO和私有化中如何选择固定价格发行或拍卖方式，发现高内在价值企业更倾向于诱导外部信息生产以提升股价，并解释了IPO拍卖之谜。
We analyze the choice between fixed-price offerings and auctions in IPOs and privatizations. We model a firm going public by selling equity in the IPO market. Firm insiders have private information about intrinsic firm value, but outsiders can produce information about this value before bidding for shares. Inducing information production is beneficial for higher intrinsic value firms, because this information, reflected in secondary market prices, yields higher equity prices. We show that auctions and fixed-price offerings have different properties for inducing information production, solve for the equilibrium IPO mechanisms for firms with different characteristics, and explain the “IPO auction” puzzle. Received July 3, 2012; Editorial decision July 14, 2018 by Editor Paolo Fulghieri