If IPOs can serve as a proverbial "canary in a coal mine" for certain sectors and the market as a whole, how should we interpret some recent IPO news?

Adam Lashinsky at Fortune views the dearth of venture capital backed company IPOs as a plus for the economy in opposition to the dire comments by industry spokesmen.

The dearth of new offerings actually means that fewer low-quality companies will come to market, which means that fewer investors will get burned investing in substandard companies, which means that fewer people's next-door neighbors and cousins will lose their shirts in the stock market.

One area that is not lacking in IPOs is the investment banking sector. Jenny Anderson in the New York Times notes a couple of middle market investment banks with less than stellar financial results are coming to market soon.

These firms may enjoy a short-term pop, but some may lack an adequate diversity of earnings and have failed to prove they can make money in good and bad markets.

China has seen a dearth of IPOs this past year not because of a lack in demand, but becauase the Chinese government needed time to restructure government ownership stakes and some additional rules. James T. Areddy in the Wall Street Journal reports on the prospect for a revival in the Chinese IPO market.

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution highlights a research piece that calls into question the value of so-called auction IPOs. Some researchers have found that in countries that have used auction formats, they often revert back to the standard pricing method. Google (GOOG) aside, the auction IPO method has not really caught on here in the United States.