Abstract

In a typical IPO game with first-price auctions, we argue that risk-averse investors always underbid in equilibrium because of sucbjective interpreetations of the firm' communications about its actual value and resulting risk aversion about the likelihood of facing investors with higher valuations. We show that the noisier the investors' inferences of the firm' value(in the sense of first-order stochastic dominance) the higher the underbidding level. Our finding is independent of winner's curse effects and possible irrational, and allows for a testable theory.