Political Uncertainty and Initial Public Offerings: A Literature Review

Abstract

The literature on the influence of political and policy-related uncertainties on financial aspects has gained an impetus in the last two decades. This study adds to the existing literature by reviewing the impact of political uncertainty on initial public offerings (IPOs). We aim to provide a holistic overview of the past research in this domain, identify the potential research gaps, and explore them further. We performed a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer to identify the major keywords used, the most cited papers, the authors, and the major countries where research in this domain has taken place. Our perspective on the current state of the literature has been threefold. First, considering the importance of market timing in the firm’s decision to go public, it was seen that firms had shown an unwillingness to come up with an IPO during periods of high political uncertainty. Second, political uncertainty has shown its influence in all the phases of the IPO process; however, political connections and donations mitigate this effect. Third, the research in this domain is still at a very nascent stage and is mainly restricted to China and the US. Thus, we believe that there are several areas that are yet to be explored.