ABSTRACT

Securities-based crowdfunding has evolved into an important source of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), but little is known about how crowdfunding campaigns fit into the capital structure decisions of SMEs. Combining insights from SME capital structure and crowdfunding literatures results in high ambiguity, as crowdfunding seems to change SME financing dynamics, but in an uncertain direction. We construct variables based on previous work on SME capital structure literature to empirically test which characteristics help explain the choice to seek either equity or debt funding among firms using crowdfunding. We use 713 equity and 403 debt campaign announcements registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under Regulation Crowdfunding. Our empirical procedure includes both the traditionally used logistic regression method as well as a random forest classifier. We find that less-established firms with smaller funding needs are more likely to issue equity, whereas firms with strong growth momentum and larger funding needs prefer debt.

摘要

基于证券的众筹已发展成为中小企业 (SME) 的重要融资来源，但人们对众筹活动如何适应中小企业的资本结构决策知之甚少。结合中小企业资本结构和众筹文献的见解导致高度模糊，因为众筹似乎改变了中小企业融资动态，但方向不确定。我们根据之前关于中​​小企业资本结构文献的工作构建变量，以实证检验哪些特征有助于解释在使用众筹的公司中寻求股权或债务融资的选择。我们使用在监管众筹下在美国证券交易委员会注册的 713 份股权和 403 份债务活动公告。我们的经验过程包括传统使用的逻辑回归方法以及随机森林分类器。我们发现，资金需求较小的不太成熟的公司更有可能发行股票，而增长势头强劲且资金需求较大的公司更喜欢发债。