There has been an extensive debate in financial economics research on long-term abnormal stock returns following firms' initial public offerings (IPOs). So far, the discussion has concentrated on long-term underperformance.

Frank Ecker examines the performance of U.S. IPOs from 1980 to 2002. He links positive and negative abnormal returns to the deviation of the realized information risk from the expected information risk. The author shows that abnormal returns are significantly negative during the price adjustment process when information risk has initially been underestimated whereas the returns are significantly positive in cases of information risk overestimation. Based on his findings, he proposes effective measures for a long-term profitable investment strategy in IPOs.

Autorentext

Dr. Frank Ecker promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Hellmuth Milde am Lehrstuhl für Geld, Kredit und Finanzierung der Universität Trier. Er ist Assistant Professor of Accounting an der Duke University, Fuqua School of Business, Durham, USA.

Inhalt
and Motivation.- Valuation under Information Risk.- Derivation of a Returns-Based Measure of Information Quality.- Abnormal Returns Measurement and Hypotheses Development.- Tests with Abnormal Portfolio Returns.- Robustness Tests.- Concluding Remarks.