Crowdfunding has become an important financing alternative for micro-entrepreneurship. We study to what extent bias toward local entrepreneurs is prevalent in crowdfunding markets, determine the main driving forces for such bias, and examine how crowdfunding platforms and policymakers can leverage these forces to stimulate micro-entrepreneurship. Even though online crowdfunding platforms are designed to overcome geographic barriers, we find evidence of strong local bias induced by both informational frictions and local preference, with the former being more important.
This article discussing that Chinese firms tend to emphasize the stability of financial performance in their reports. In contrast to U.S. firms, their financial disclosures are significantly swayed by non-shareholder stakeholders and do not leverage voluntary disclosures to mitigate capital costs.
Using the unique institutional feature of government regulations in China, we provide robust evidence that firms with a larger employment size have significantly better access to bond credit.
China’s political leadership recently committed to expanding the proportion of middle-income groups to create a less polarised, and more ‘olive-shaped’, distribution of wealth. This column considers the potential trade-offs between reducing income polarisation and other goals, including poverty reduction.
It’s not just about jobs. It’s also about love, status, and the marriage market.