Macroeconomic Determinants of IPO Activity in Poland between 1993 and 2013

Abstract

Purpose of the article: This study deals with recent primary stock market developments in Poland and aims to indicate the influence of local macroeconomic indicators on IPO numbers over the period of 1993 to 2012. Methodology/methods: Descriptive statistics are used to analyse capital market and IPO developments and the Spearman correlation analysis identifies the relations between macroeconomic determinants and the IPO numbers. The data were evaluated at the significance level of α=5%. The entire statistical evaluation was performed by Statistica.CZ, Version 12. Scientific aim: The scientific aim of this article is to explore external factors that may influence the decision of enterprises to go public in the Polish capital market and thus to enlarge the current IPO literature with an analysis the following issue: What are the key local macroeconomic determinants of going public on the market in question? The number of variables used in this paper is greater than those considered in previous Polish IPO studies. Moreover, we focus on IPO activities between 1993 and 2012 and thus extend the existing time-series. Findings: The results of the correlation analysis can be summarized as follows. First of all, the hypothesis that the business cycle and stock index returns have explanatory power for the number of IPOs could not be supported by empirical evidence. On the other hand, we found empirical support that the reference interest rate affected the IPO numbers. Conclusions: The hypothesis that the reference interest rate has explanatory power for IPO numbers in the Polish capital market could be supported by empirical evidence. On the other hand we could not confirm any significant lagged effects concerning the relationship between other explanatory variables and the dependent variable. Therefore, our results suggest only a partial consistency with the theory and findings of previous Polish IPO studies.