A Review of Korea’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) Literature

Abstract

We review studies exploring IPO activities in Korea. The number of studies on the Korean IPO market has grown rapidly in the past decade as the Korean financial market is becoming mature. This paper specifically aims to survey the Korean IPO literature by focusing on three main areas of current research: underpricing, long-term underperformance and special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). We first categorize studies on the underpricing issues and group them into following subcategories: regulations and policies, underwriters, venture capitals, ownership structure, stock options, behavior factors, offer prices, investor sentiment, signalling effects and profit adjustment. We then survey papers on the long-term underperformance, and we also group them into following subcategories: credit rating, venture capital, employee stock ownership, hot market, managerial behavior and institutional investor. Final category reviews research papers on SPACs and reverse mergers.