Home Bias in Online Investments: An Empirical Study of an Online Crowdfunding Market
利用大型在线众筹平台的数据和准实验设计，发现本地偏好依然存在，且行为因素而非完全理性解释驱动这一现象，对理解众筹中的投资者行为有重要启示。
An extensive literature in economics and finance has documented home bias, the tendency that transactions are more likely to occur between parties in the same geographical area rather than outside. Using data from a large online crowdfunding marketplace and employing a quasi-experimental design, we find evidence that home bias still exists in this virtual marketplace for financial products. Furthermore, through a series of empirical tests, we show that rationality-based explanations cannot fully explain such behavior and that behavioral reasons at least partially drive this remarkable phenomenon. As crowdfunding becomes an alternative and increasingly appealing channel for financing, a better understanding of home bias in this new context provides important managerial, practical, and policy implications. This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.