Intellectual Capital Disclosure Impact in IPOs pre and Post GFC: Evidence From NASDAQ

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the influence of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on Intellectual Capital disclosure (ICD) in IPO prospectuses. We examine then how ICD influenced the post-issue stock performance of technology companies that had IPOs from 2002 to 2011. We apply a two-stage approach in methodology. First we use content analysis along with Krippendorff's alpha for reliability checking. We then apply regression analysis to answer the research question concerning the influence of ICD in IPO prospectuses on post-issue stock performance. According to content analysis results IPO prospectuses contain significant amounts of ICD for our subsequent analysis. The econometric analysis reveals that ICD has a higher influence on post-issue stock performance after the GFC than before the GFC. The main limitation of the paper is the sample that contains of 76 technology companies listed on NASDAQ. But these are all the companies that satisfy the research selection criteria and thus the sample could not be extended for the research period. The empirical results indicate the importance of ICD disclosure for technology companies. This is one of few papers that reveal the influence of the GFC on Intellectual Capital Disclosure.