An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a crucial stage in the life of a firm since it allows the firm to emerge and grow. Corporate Governance, intended as the set of mechanisms and institutional designs that ensure that investors get a return on their investment, is a key aspect in the IPO sincem it ultimately affects its performance as well as the valuation given by the market. In this manuscript, we review the trajectory of the literature on corporate governance using a theoretical framework that distinguishes corporate governance mechanisms from market, authority and institutional mechanisms.