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This book focuses on various types of crowdfunding and the lessons learned from academic research. Crowdfunding, a new and important source of financing for entrepreneurs, fills a funding gap that was traditionally difficult to close. Chapters from expert contributors define and carefully evaluate the various market segments: donation-based and reward-based crowdfunding, crowdinvesting and crowdlending. They further provide an assessment of startups, market structure, as well as backers and investors for each segment. Attention is given to the theoretical and empirical findings from the recent economics and finance literature. Furthermore, the authors evaluate relevant regulatory efforts in several jurisdictions. This book will appeal to finance, entrepreneurship and legal scholars as well as entrepreneurs and platform operators.

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1: Introduction Part I Startups 2: Crowdfunding as a New Financing Tool 3: Signaling to Overcome Inefficiencies in Crowdfunding Markets 4: The Crowd-Entrepreneur Relationship in Startup Financing 5: Fraudulent Behavior by Entrepreneurs and Borrowers Part II Market Structure 6: Fintech and the Financing of SMEs and Entrepreneurs: From Crowdfunding to Marketplace Lending Part III Backers and Investors 7: Crowdfunding as a Font of Entrepreneurship: Outcomes of Reward-Based Crowdfunding 8: Crowdfunding Creative Ideas: The Dynamics of Project Backers Part IV Recent Regulatory Efforts 9: The Regulation of Crowdfunding in the United States. 10: The Regulation of Crowdfunding in Europe 11: Individual Investors´ Access to Crowdinvesting: Two Regulatory Models.

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Douglas Cumming is a Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship and the Ontario Research Chair at the Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada. Douglas has published over 140 articles in leading refereed academic journals in finance, management, and law and economics. He is the incoming Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Corporate Finance (January 2018), and a Co-Editor of Annals of Corporate Governance, Finance Research Letters, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. He is the author and editor of over a dozen books. Douglas´ work has been reviewed in numerous media outlets, including The Economist, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.


Lars Hornuf is a Professor of Finance at the University of Bremen, Germany. He was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Duke University, and Georgetown University. From 2014 to 2017 Lars held a grant from the German Research Foundation on "Crowdinvesting in Germany, England and the USA: Regulatory Perspectives and Welfare Implications of a New Financing Scheme." In 2016, he wrote two expert reports for the Federal Ministry of Finance on the German FinTech market and the Small Investor Protection Act. Lars´ work has been covered in newspapers like The Economist and Foreign Policy.

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