Cutting out the Middleman: Crowdinvesting, Efficiency, and Inequality

Grüner, Hans Peter and Christoph Siemroth

No 10488, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We show that direct investments by consumers without the use of financial intermediaries can efficiently allocate financial capital to firms seeking funding for production of a novel consumption good. In our setting, consumers are also investors, and their privately known consumption preferences are correlated. Hence, consumers can use their own preferences to identify worthwhile investment opportunities and tend to invest in firms whose product they like. A socially optimal capital allocation and complete information aggregation about consumer preferences is achieved if and only if all groups of consumers have enough wealth to invest. If some groups of consumers cannot invest, then capital flows reflect preferences of the wealthy but not necessarily future aggregate demand. Traditional financial intermediaries can improve the allocation of capital only if wealth inequality prevents an efficient allocation of capital by consumers, but financing via intermediaries never reaches the social optimum.

Keywords: Capital markets; Crowdfunding; Crowdinvesting; Financial markets; Financial intermediation; Information aggregation; Wealth inequality; Welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 D31 D53 D63 D82 G20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Crowdfunding, Efficiency, and Inequality (2019)
Working Paper: Crowdfunding, Efficiency, and Inequality (2017)
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