Financing from Family and Friends
研究发现，家人和朋友的融资虽然成本低，但因挤占家庭保险和削弱有限责任，反而抑制了风险投资，因此需要中介和半正规化来促进风险承担。
Most informal finance comes from family and friends. Existing informal finance theories cannot match two characteristics of family finance: family investors may accept below-market or even negative returns, yet borrowers often prefer formal finance. We argue that social preferences make family finance cheap but create shadow costs that nonetheless discourage its use: Committing family funds to risky investment displaces intrafamily insurance and undermines limited liability. The same characteristics that sustain familial insurance thus render family finance a poor source of risk capital. Even when overcoming capital constraints requires social ties, intermediation and semiformalization may therefore be crucial for promoting risk taking. Received April 29, 2013; accepted December 4, 2015 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.