High Order Strategic Thinking

Abstract

In recent years public stock issuings by (new) stock companies, i.e. initial public offerings (IPOs), have attracted steadily rising attention on financial markets worldwide. In Germany, for instance, the number of IPOs on the so-called New Market is supposed to increase from 168 in 1999 up to more than 200 in 2000. A salient characteristic of initial public offerings, at least in Germany, is a significant total excess demand, or let us say oversubscription, at the end of the subscription period. Particularly prominent cases in Germany showing this phenomenon were the going public of the“Deutsche Telekom” in 1996, of“Infineon”, the semiconductor daughter of Siemens, in spring 2000, and“T-Online”, the internet daughter of the Deutsche Telekom, also in spring 2000.

The authors are grateful to Dr. Horst Bienert, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, for essential advice in conceptualising the experimental designs. Thanks for helpful comments and criticisms are also due to participants of seminars and workshops at the Universities of Mannheim, Trento, Saarbrücken and Leipzig, and to the participants of the GEW-Workshop in Meißen 1998.