Abstract
Finance literature notes that over most of the 1980s higher reputation underwriters issue firms with lower initial returns, while duringthe majority of the 1990s, higher reputation underwriters issue firms withhigher initial returns. This study seeks to further the understandingof why the change in this relationship occurred. When segmenting firmsbased on the amount that a firm files to raise in its initial publicoffering, between 1980 and 1991 only firms that file in the two middlequartiles show a significantly negative relation between reputation andinitial returns, while between 1992 and 2003 only firms that file in thethird file amount quartile show a significantly positive relationship.