Unleashing the Crowd: The Effect of Social Networks in Crowdfunding Markets

The paper was previously circulated under the title “Social Ties and Peer Effects in Crowdfunding Markets.” The authors thank Linda Allen, Matthew Elliott, Sanjeev Goyal, Jinglin Jiang, Theresa Kuchler, Tse-Chun Lin, Ramana Nanda, Vesa Pursiainen, Tarun Ramadorai, Orly Sade, Yu Shan, Rui Shen, Tao Shu, Johannes Stroebel, Huan Tang, Wei Xiong, Hongjun Yan (discussant), Jun Yang, Liyan Yang, Jiaquan Yao (discussant), Yao Zeng, and Dexin Zhou, as well as conference and seminar participants at the 2021 Asian Finance Association Meetings, the 2021 Cambridge-INET Networks Webinar, the 2021 China Meeting of the Econometric Society, the 2021 Conference on Markets and Economies with Information Frictions, the 2021 Southwestern Finance Association Meetings, the 2022 Summer Institute of Finance Conference, the 2022 International Conference on Finance & Technology, Baruch College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), and Texas Tech University for helpful comments. The authors thank Meiya Xiong for excellent research assistance. All errors remain our own.