Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
基于最优投资的众筹：众筹祝福与规模
Optimal investment-based crowdfunding: crowdblessing versus scale
摘要
This paper examines crowdfunding of a risky, constant-returns project. The crowdfunder chooses a threshold and interest rate. These jointly determine profit and welfare outcomes by influencing investors’ decisions to acquire information and to bid and by aggregating the information their bids reveal into a project funding decision. A higher threshold funds fewer projects but, fixing investor strategies, raises the ratio of good to bad quality among those that get funded by a factor we call the “crowdblessing.” At the same time, raising the threshold, or the interest rate, reduces incentives to acquire and use private information. Optimal design trades off crowdblessing against investment scale. Surprisingly, profit-maximizers sometimes induce excessive information acquisition to limit investor rent. In our comparative statics, information acquisition falls with the cost of information and with prior optimism but precision has an ambiguous impact. Costly information reduces welfare but may raise profits by facilitating rent-extraction.
中文摘要
本文考察了一个具有风险且规模报酬不变项目的众筹问题。众筹发起人选择门槛和利率。二者通过影响投资者获取信息以及出价的决定，并将投资者出价所揭示的信息汇总为项目融资决策，共同决定利润与福利结果。较高的门槛会减少获得融资的项目数量，但在固定投资者策略的情况下，会提高获得融资项目中优质项目与劣质项目的比例，其倍数我们称之为“众筹祝福”。与此同时，提高门槛或利率会削弱投资者获取和使用私人信息的激励。最优设计需要在众筹祝福与投资规模之间进行权衡。令人意外的是，利润最大化者有时会诱发过度信息获取，以限制投资者租金。在我们的比较静态分析中，信息获取随信息成本和先验乐观程度上升而下降，但精确度的影响并不明确。高成本信息会降低福利，但可能通过便利租金抽取而提高利润。