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Purpose: Kenya has experienced a drought in initial public offerings (IPOs) since 2014. Among varied causes of IPO Drought is decline in demand of IPO shares by retail investors. This paper assert decline in demand is partially attributed to low-quality listings in the past that underperformed in both short- and long-run. Design: The paper investigated quality of listing firms at the time of listing on all IPOs made between 2000 to 2014 in Nairobi Securities Exchange using various dimensions. Findings: The results revealed most of listing firms lacked growth opportunities, reported weak financial performances and engaged in earnings managements. Liberal listing guidelines aiming at attracting firms to list in numbers led to low-quality offerings. Implication: Strategy of liberal listing requirements is counterproductive as demand for the listings keep shrinking due to low-quality of listed firms that underperform in long-run. The study recommends reviewing of listing requirements so that only high-quality firms are allowed to list to keep the market vibrant. As long as low quality offerings are allowed, retail IPO investors will keep off the market as they suffer adverse selection costs

Education is one of the most important tools available to policymakers and non-governmental bodies to promote a change in the behavior of society and to address the climate crisis, in line with the 4th and 13th Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Project-based learning (PBL) addresses real and global challenges and allows the academic and professional formation of students. As part of the reflection stage of the educational action research method using the Business Canvas Model (BMC), pedagogic deficiencies were identified in the PBL and a didactic proposal was elaborated to emulate the interaction of students with the ecosystems of society. A prototype for improving the management of organic manures as soil amendments was initially developed, to provide the students with a quick start on the first steps of the proposed project. In the 10 sessions designed for the PBL (Make it happen!), the students elaborate a more sophisticated artifact in response to the demands of potential clients, as per the outcomes of the primary market research (5th session). Active teaching methods and tools, such as a modified template of the BMC with the Rumsfeld’s matrix, aid the metacognition of students and their competences development. In a double session of the PBL, the primary market research is organized with key stakeholders of the agroindustry to enquire about the feasibility of the implementation of the technological solution and the logistics at farm level. Finally, the evaluation relies on the suitability of the upgraded prototype to respond customers’ demands.

The primary market of many US registered ETFs exhibits an oligopolistic structure, which is shown to have relevant implications for the pricing efficiency of those financial products. I show that the entry of an additional Authorized Participant (AP) corresponds to a decrease in the magnitude of ETF price deviations from Net Asset Value (NAV) of at least one basis point in ETFs with high primary market concentration. I build a dynamic equilibrium model of ETF primary market arbitrage that describes the trade-off faced by monopolistically competitive APs between waiting for mispricing to widen and pre-empting competitors from eliminating it. In the model, the creation unit size is shown to be an important friction driving the entry decision and, therefore, the magnitude of mispricing. Indeed, in the data, around one-third of all primary market transactions amount to one creation unit, suggesting that it is often a binding constraint. ETF split events and the creation unit size changes help to identify shocks to the dollar value of creation unit size empirically. I show that by cutting the creation unit size in half, mispricing decreases by almost two basis points, a magnitude consistent with that implied by my quantitative model.