Direct Listing: The Market-Driven Way to Go Public

After an initial analysis of the traditional IPO, its practices and costs, the dissertation identifies flaws of the conventional process to list on the public market. It then deepens the judgment of an alternative market-driven way to go public: direct listings. The work brings together what is known on the matter and seeks to understand if the defects of IPOs are the result of man-made frictions. After an interpretation of past direct listings, my conclusion is that, under certain conditions, a market-driven approach outperforms the traditional IPO in terms of efficient pricing and allocation.