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a b s t r a c tThis paper investigates how underwriters set the IPO firm's fair value, an ex-ante estimate of the market value, using a unique dataset of 228 reports from French underwriters. These reports are issued before the IPO shares start trading on the stock market and detail how underwriters determined fair value. We document that underwriters often employ multiples valuation, dividend discount models and discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis to determine fair value but that all of these valuation methods suffer from a positive bias with respect to equilibrium market value. We also analyze how this fair value estimate is subsequently used as a basis for IPO pricing. We report that underwriters deliberately discount the fair value estimate when setting the preliminary offer price. Part of the intentional price discount can be recovered by higher price updates. We find that, controlling for other factors such as investor demand, part of underpricing stems from this intentional price discount.

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This paper analyzes a large dataset of 2171 equity crowdfunding campaigns launched between the years 2012 and 2017 on two of the world's largest platforms Crowdcube and Seedrs. Our data shows that the equity crowdfunding market has matured: more recent campaigns tend to be launched by larger and older companies with better access to external financing. Given the market's dynamics, we use a rolling three-year window to forecast funding success and develop a simple model based on information that is available at the time of the campaign (e.g., retained equity, external fundraising before the campaign, accelerator attendance, and information about the directors' team). Our proposed forecasting method can be beneficial to both platforms and entrepreneurs for improving outcomes on the equity crowdfunding market.