Investigating the Causal Relationship Between Stocks’ Initial Public Offerings and Macroeconomic Variables

Initial public offerings (IPO) is considered an important turning point in the investment literature. This type of stock not only removes the constraints of resources and capital limitations faced by companies and provides the necessary basis for providing liquidity to companies, but also offers a wide range of investment strategies to companies. Therefore, the main goal of the present study is to investigate the Granger causality relationship between the number of IPO and macroeconomic variables including industrial production, the interest rate on government debt, stock market, and stock market volatility using the Vector Auto Regression (VAR) model during the period 1991-2019 for the Tehran Stock Exchange. The results showed that the number of IPOs is the reason for the growth of industrial production and the fluctuations of the stock index. It was also found that the number of IPOs was the reason for the growth of the stock index and the fluctuations of the stock market and interest rate due to the government's debt. This means that macroeconomic variables such as industrial production, interest rates on government debt, and the stock market are sensitive to small impulses from the number of IPOs and can have macroeconomic consequences in Iran. Based on the results, it can be acknowledged that the financial resources obtained through the number of IPOs of the companies should not be spent at the expense of the government and it is better to spend the financial resources on the development of these companies and the stock market.