IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hum/wpaper/sfb649dp2015-036.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Crowdfunding, demand uncertainty, and moral hazard - a mechanism design approach

Author

Listed:
  • Roland Strausz

Abstract

Crowdfunding challenges the traditional separation between nance and marketing. It creates economic value by reducing demand uncertainty, which enables a better screening of positive NPV projects. Entrepreneurial moral hazard threatens this e ect. Using mechanism design, mechanisms are characterized that induce ecient screening, while preventing moral hazard. \All-ornothing" reward-crowdfunding platforms re ect salient features of these mechanisms. Eciency is sustainable only if expected gross returns exceed twice expected investment costs. Constrained ecient mechanisms exhibit underinvestment. With limited consumer reach, crowdfunders become actual investors. Crowdfunding complements rather than substitutes traditional entrepreneurial nancing, because each nancing mode displays a di erent strength.

Suggested Citation

  • Roland Strausz, 2015. "Crowdfunding, demand uncertainty, and moral hazard - a mechanism design approach," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2015-036, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2015-036
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://sfb649.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/papers/pdf/SFB649DP2015-036.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boyan Jovanovic & Rafael Rob, 1987. "Demand-Driven Innovation and Spatial Competition Over Time," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(1), pages 63-72.
    2. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    3. Ajay Agrawal & Christian Catalini & Avi Goldfarb, 2014. "Some Simple Economics of Crowdfunding," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 63-97.
    4. Raymond Deneckere & James Peck, 1995. "Competition Over Price and Service Rate When Demand is Stochastic: A Strategic Analysis," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(1), pages 148-162, Spring.
    5. Klemperer, Paul D & Meyer, Margaret A, 1989. "Supply Function Equilibria in Oligopoly under Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1243-1277, November.
    6. Ajay K. Agrawal & Christian Catalini & Avi Goldfarb, 2011. "The Geography of Crowdfunding," NBER Working Papers 16820, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. James D. Dana Jr., 1999. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion Under Demand Uncertainty: The Roles of Costly Capacity and Market Structure," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 632-660, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ellman, Matthew & Hurkens, Sjaak, 2019. "Optimal crowdfunding design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    2. Gilles Chemla & Katrin Tinn, 2020. "Learning Through Crowdfunding," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 1783-1801, May.
    3. Lars Hornuf & Matthias Schmitt, 2016. "Success and Failure in Equity Crowdfunding," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 14(2), pages 16-22, 07.
    4. Loertscher, Simon & Marx, Leslie M., 2017. "Club good intermediaries," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 430-459.
    5. Sahm, Marco, 2016. "Advance-purchase financing of projects with few buyers," BERG Working Paper Series 118, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roland Strausz, 2017. "A Theory of Crowdfunding: A Mechanism Design Approach with Demand Uncertainty and Moral Hazard," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(6), pages 1430-1476, June.
    2. Hans Peter Grüner & Christoph Siemroth, 2019. "Crowdfunding, Efficiency, and Inequality," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(5), pages 1393-1427.
    3. Silvio Vismara, 2018. "Information Cascades among Investors in Equity Crowdfunding," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 42(3), pages 467-497, May.
    4. Srikant Devaraj & Pankaj C Patel, 2016. "Influence of number of backers, goal amount, and project duration on meeting funding goals of crowdfunding projects," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(2), pages 1242-1249.
    5. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.
    6. Kate Gasparro & Ashby Monk, 2020. "Demystifying “localness†of infrastructure assets: Crowdfunders as local intermediaries for global investors," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(5), pages 878-897, August.
    7. Evila Piva & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, 2018. "Human capital signals and entrepreneurs’ success in equity crowdfunding," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 667-686, October.
    8. Simon Cornée & Marc Jegers & Ariane Szafarz, 2018. "A Theory of Social Finance," Working Papers halshs-01717167, HAL.
    9. Parker, Simon C., 2014. "Crowdfunding, cascades and informed investors," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 432-435.
    10. Mingchun Chen & Zhiying Liu & Chaoliang Ma & Xiuyuan Gong, 2021. "A distinctive early bird price in reward-based crowdfunding," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 347-370, June.
    11. Estrin, Saul & Gozman, Daniel & Khavul, Susanna, 2017. "Equity crowdfunding and early stage entrepreneurial finance: damaging or disruptive?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86590, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Anton Miglo & Victor Miglo, 2019. "Market imperfections and crowdfunding," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 51-79, June.
    13. Bergmann, Ariel & Burton, Bruce & Klaes, Matthias, 2021. "European perceptions on crowdfunding for renewables: Positivity and pragmatism," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    14. Yinghui Chen & Xiaolin Gong & Chien-Chi Chu & Yang Cao, 2018. "Access to the Internet and Access to Finance: Theory and Evidence," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-38, July.
    15. Sardar Muhammad Usman & Farasat Ali Shah Bukhari & Muhammad Usman & Daniel Badulescu & Muhammad Safdar Sial, 2019. "Does the Role of Media and Founder’s Past Success Mitigate the Problem of Information Asymmetry? Evidence from a UK Crowdfunding Platform," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-24, January.
    16. Kukurba Maria & Waszkiewicz Aneta, 2018. "Crowdfunding as a Form of Funding for Businesses in the Culturally-Changing Global Economy: A Literature Review," Journal of Intercultural Management, Sciendo, vol. 10(2), pages 99-137, June.
    17. BELLEFLAMME, Paul & LAMBERT, Thomas & SCHWIENBACHER, Armin, 2011. "Crowdfunding: tapping the right crowd," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011032, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    18. David, Laurent & Le Breton, Michel & Merillon, Olivier, 2007. "Public Utility Pricing and Capacity Choice with Stochastic Demand," IDEI Working Papers 489, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    19. Antonio Rosato, 2016. "Selling substitute goods to loss-averse consumers: limited availability, bargains, and rip-offs," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(3), pages 709-733, August.
    20. Carvajal, Andrés & Rostek, Marzena & Sublet, Guillaume, 2018. "Information design and capital formation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 255-292.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crowdfunding; nance; marketing; demand uncertainty; moral hazard;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2015-036. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: RDC-Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sohubde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.