This paper first presents the development of the crowdinvesting market in Europe since its start in 2007. Then, using hand-collected data on the complete set of crowdinvesting campaigns run in Germany, the paper shows that successful campaigns tend to be launched by new startups and when the...

It is often assumed that entrepreneurs retain more control of their venture when they opt for equity crowdfunding as compared to venture capital, notably because crowd investors are passive. We study whether crowd investors are indeed passive by analysing the cash flow and control rights crowd...

In crowdfunding, start-ups can voluntarily communicate with their investors by posting updates. We investigate whether start-ups strategically use updates, which were previously shown to increase investments. To this end, we use hand-collected data of 751 updates and 39,036 investment decisions...

We use hand-collected data of 20,460 investment decisions and two distinct portals to analyze whether investors in equity crowdfunding direct their investments to local firms. In line with agency theory, the results suggest that investors exhibit a local bias, even when we control for family and...

This article reports on an investigation of the role of lock-in exploitation and the impact of reputation portability on workers’ switching behaviors in online labor markets. Online platforms using reputation mechanisms typically prevent users from transferring their ratings to other...

Peer-to-business lending refers to online platforms facilitating loans from individuals to smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We conjecture that easy-to-understand risk ratings conveyed by the platform play a pronounced role in influencing the borrowing success of SMEs and that more...