Market returns before the offer price is set affect the amount and variability of initial public offering (IPO) underpricing. Thus an important question is "What IPO procedure is best adapted for controlling underpricing in "hot" versus "cold" market conditions?" The French stock market offers a unique arena for empirical research on this topic, since three substantially different issuing mechanisms (auctions, bookbuilding, and fixed price) are used there. Using 1992-1998 data, we find that the auction mechanism is associated with less underpricing and lower variance of underpricing. We show that the auction procedure's ability to incorporate more information from recent market conditions into the IPO price is an important reason. 1 An interesting and extreme example occurred in the last months of 1998. In a "hot market" in July and August, 47 IPOs were issued in the United States, whereas in the next two months, September and October, only 5 issues came public.

This paper explores the impact of investor sentiment on IPO pricing. Using a model in which the aftermarket price of IPO shares depends on the information about the intrinsic value of the company and investor sentiment, I show that IPOs can be overpriced and still exhibit positive initial return. A sample of recent French offerings with a fraction of the shares reserved for individual investors supports the predictions of the model. Individual investors' demand is positively related to market conditions. Moreover, large individual investors' demand leads to high IPO prices, large initial returns, and poor long-run performance.

International audienceWe study the causal effects of analyst coverage on corporate investment and financing policies. We hypothesize that a decrease in analyst coverage increases information asymmetry and thus increases the cost of capital; as a result, firms decrease their investment and financing. We use broker closures and broker mergers to identify changes in analyst coverage that are exogenous to corporate policies. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that firms that lose an analyst decrease their investment and financing by 1.9% and 2.0% of total assets, respectively, compared to similar firms that do not lose an analyst

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