The existence of peer effect on financial decision is well documented in the literature. However, little is known about the peer effect on default choice of consumer credit. We fill this gap by using a novel data and research design constructed from a cash loan platform in China. We find the...

This article describes the different consumer credit crowdfunding platform models that are currently operating in Spain and analyses their development and their main characteristics by drawing on granular data publicly available from two of the platforms operating in Spain. The article shows...

This paper investigates the causal effect of economic sentiment on consumption using micro-data between 2008 and 2017. After showing that individuals update their beliefs about the national state of the economic in response to local housing and labor market fluctuations, I use the Social...

We examine how word-of-mouth learning may lead to uniform and possibly inefficient actions in finite time among a network of agents. In our model, agents are identically informed a priori and observe network neighbors’ actions as well as the payoffs of some or all of those actions (a...

In consumer-to-consumer online platforms that enable selling (e.g., eBay, Taobao) or sharing (e.g., Airbnb, Uber) of goods and services, information asymmetry between providers (e.g., sellers, hosts, drivers) and consumers (e.g., buyers, guests, passengers) pose challenges. Such platforms...

Online freelance marketplaces are websites that match buyers of electronically deliverable services with freelancers. While freelancing has grown in recent years, it faces the classic ‘information asymmetry’ problem – buyers face uncertainty over seller quality. Typically, these markets...

While firms have obtained outside financing from large numbers of investors on financial markets for centuries, online crowdfunding platforms have only emerged as a major source of funding for start-ups and new projects for a decade. The information available to backers on crowdfunding platforms...