Underpricing of Initial Offerings and the Efficiency of Investments

신주(新株)의 저가상장현상(低價上場現象)과 투자(投資)의 효율성(效率成)에 대한 연구(硏究)

The underpricing of new shares of a firm that are offered to the public for the first time (initial offerings) is well known and has puzzled financial economists for a long time since it seems at odds with the optimal behavior of the owners of issuing firms. Past attempts by financial economists to explain this phenomenon have not been successful in the sense that the explanations given by them are either inconsistent with the equilibrium theory or implausible. Approaches by such authors as Welch or Allen and Faulhaber are no exceptions. In this paper, we develop a signalling model of capital investment to explain the underpricing phenomenon and also analyze the efficiency of investment. The model focuses on the information asymmetry between the owners of issuing firms and general investors. We consider a firm that has been owned and operated by a single owner and that has a profitable project but has no capital to develop it. The profit from the project depends on the capital invested in the project as well as a profitability parameter. The model also assumes that the financial market is represented by a single investor who maximizes the expected wealth. The owner has superior information as to the value of the firm to investors in the sense that it knows the true value of the parameter while investors have only a probability distribution about the parameter. The owner offers the representative investor a fraction of the ownership of the firm in return for a certain amount of investment in the firm. This offer condition is equivalent to the usual offer condition consisting of the number of issues to sell and the unit price of a share. Thus, the model is a signalling game. Using Kreps' criterion as the solution concept, we obtained an essentially unique separating equilibrium offer condition. Analysis of this separating equilibrium shows that the owner of the firm with high profitability chooses an offer condition that raises an amount of capital that is short of the amount that maximizes the potential profit from the project. It also reveals that the fraction of the ownership of the firm that the representative investor receives from the owner of the highly profitable firm in return for its investment has a value that exceeds the investment. In other words, the initial offering in the model is underpriced when the profitability of the firm is high. The source of underpricing and underinvestment is the signalling activity by the owner of the highly profitable firm who attempts to convince investors that his firm has a highly profitable project by choosing an offer condition that cannot be imitated by the owner of a firm with low profitability. Thus, we obtained two main results. First, underpricing is a result of a signalling activity by the owner of a firm with high profitability when there exists information asymmetry between the owner of the issuing firm and investors. Second, such information asymmetry also leads to underinvestment in a highly profitable project. Those results clearly show the underpricing entails underinvestment and that information asymmetry leads to a social cost as well as a private cost. The above results are quite general in the sense that they are based upon a neoclassical profit function and full rationality of economic agents. We believe that the results of this paper can be used as a basis for further research on the capital investment process. For instance, one can view the results of this paper as a subgame equilibrium in a larger game in which a firm chooses among diverse ways to raise capital. In addition, the method used in this paper can be used in analyzing a wide range of problems arising from information asymmetry that the Korean financial market faces.

비상장기업(非上場企業)이 최초로 주식시장(株式市場)에 발행하는 신주(新株)가 실제가치에 비해 낮은 가격(價格)에 상장(上場)되는 신주(新株)의 저평가현상(低評價現象)이 번번히 일어나고 있으나 아직 그 원인(原因)이 명확히 밝혀지고 있지 않다. 또한 신주발행(新株發行)을 통한 자본조달(資本調達)의 효율성(效率性)에 관한 기존(旣存)의 연구도 전무(前無)하다. 본고(本稿)에서는 기업(企業)의 수익성(收益性)에 관하여 기업주(企業主)의 우월(優越)한 정보(情報)를 가정한 신호경기적(信號競技的) 모델의 분석(分析)을 통하여 신주(新株)의 저가상장(低價上場) 원인(原因)을 밝혀내고 아울러 신주발행(新株發行)을 통한 자본조달(資本調達)의 효율성(效率性)을 검토해 보았다. 모델의 분리균형(分離均衡)의 분석(分析)을 통해 밝혀진 주요 결과는 다음과 같다. 고수익성(高收益性)프로젝트를 가진 기업주(企業主)는 프로젝트가 저수익성(低收益性)인 경우에는 선택할 유인(誘因)이 없는 발행조건 중 자신에게 가장 유리한 조건을 선택함으로써 투자자들에게 기업이 고수익성(高收益性)임을 입증(立證)하고자 하며 이 과정에서 선택된 고수익성기업(高收益性企業)의 발행조건의 성격은 다음과 같다. 첫째, 넓은 범위와 모수(母數)값에 대해 신주가격(新株價格)은 판매대금(販賣代金)이 기업(企業)에 유입(流入)된 이후 1주(株)에 해당하는 기업(企業)의 가치에 미달한다. 둘째, 기업(企業)에 유입(流入)되는 자본(資本)은 프로젝트로부터의 잠재적(潛在的) 이윤(利潤)을 극대화(極大化)하는 액수에 미달한다. 따라서 신주(新株)의 저가상장(低價上場)은 고수익성기업주(高收益性企業主)의 신호행위(信號行爲)의 결과이며 또한 신주(新株)의 저가상장(低價上場)은 저투자(低投資)를 의미한다.