We provide the first study of underwriter-affiliated analysts' pre-IPO research coverage and its impact on stock prices. Using proprietary data on a sample of Chinese IPOs, we document that affiliated analysts make highly overoptimistic forecasts about IPO clients. Analyst hype inflates both the offer price and the aftermarket price. Consistent with the sentiment theory, IPO investors inadequately adjust to analyst hype because the offer price is set sufficiently lower than the aftermarket price. The results hold when we instrument analyst hype with a variable that affects their hyping incentive. We also utilize a regulatory change as a quasi-experiment. Our analysis contributes to the debate about regulations on pre-IPO information provision.

The decrease in companies going public has received widespread attention, and the associated costs are widely debated. We document that high local initial public offering (IPO) activity leads to increases in stock market participation of 5–6 percent. This is striking, given that such participation represents a key factor toward building wealth. Local IPOs increase both households’ propensity to own stock and their percent equity holdings. The attention channel drives effects: local IPOs attract attention to the market, through increased information production and publicity. The wealth channel has little influence, consistent with local IPOs not generating wealth shocks for most households.

This article provides a survey of China’s initial public offering (IPO) market, focusing on IPO pricing, bids and allocation, and aftermarket trading. We show that strict regulations result in suppressed IPO offer prices and high initial returns, causing a high cost of going public. Investors treat IPOs as lotteries with extremely high short-term returns, with little attention to the long term. The auction selling method, however, works in the way it is supposed to. Mutual funds bid in a more informative way than other investors, and their advantages are unlikely to be due to underwriters’ preferential treatment. We also discuss the latest registration-system reform.