Cross listing waves

Using a 57-year global panel of listings on foreign stock exchanges, we identify waves in foreign listing activity at the host market, home market, and industry levels. We observe that the waves in the host market are often due to cross-listing waves in home markets or industries that share a particular affiliation with the respective host market. We then find that cross-listing waves in a given host country or from a given home country largely coincide with the outperformance of that country’s economy and financial markets relative to other competing markets. We also show that firms that list their shares during waves are associated with a temporary value premium. Our results provide novel evidence of non-monotonic market development across countries and over time.Firm valuation; Market competitiveness; Market timing; Stock exchanges