TY - JOUR AU - Doidge,Craig AU - Karolyi,G. Andrew AU - Stulz,René M. TI - The U.S. Left Behind: The Rise of IPO Activity Around the World JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 16916 PY - 2011 Y2 - March 2011 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16916 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16916.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Craig Doidge University of Toronto 105 St. George St. Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E6 Canada E-Mail: craig.doidge@rotman.utoronto.ca Andrew Karolyi Johnson Graduate School of Management Cornell University 348 Sage Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Tel: (607) 255-2153 E-Mail: gak56@cornell.edu Rene M. Stulz The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business 806A Fisher Hall Columbus, OH 43210-1144 Tel: 614/292-1970 Fax: 614/292-2359 E-Mail: stulz_1@cob.osu.edu M2 - featured in NBER digest on 2011-08-01 AB - During the past two decades, there has been a dramatic change in IPO activity around the world. Though vibrant IPO activity, attributed to better institutions and governance, used to be a strength of the U.S., it no longer is. IPO activity in the U.S. has fallen compared to the rest of the world and U.S. firms go public less than expected based on the economic importance of the U.S. In the early 1990s, the declining U.S. IPO share was due to the extraordinary growth of IPOs in foreign countries; in the 2000s, however, it is due to higher IPO activity abroad combined with lower IPO activity in the U.S. Global IPOs, which are IPOs in which some of the proceeds are raised outside the firm’s home country, play a critical role in the increase in IPO activity outside the U.S. The quality of a country’s institutions is positively related to its domestic IPO activity and negatively related to its global IPO activity. However, home country institutions are more important in explaining IPO activity in the 1990s than in the 2000s. The evidence is consistent with the view that access to global markets helps firms overcome the obstacles of poor institutions. Finally, we show that the dynamics of global IPO activity and country-level IPO activity are strongly affected by global factors. ER -