Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Douglas Cumming and Lars Hornuf -- Crowdfunding as a new financing tool / Gaël Leboeuf and Armin Schwienbacher -- Signaling to overcome inefficiencies in crowdfunding markets / Silvio Vismara -- The crowd-entrepreneur relationship in startup financing / Thomas Lambert, Aleksandrina Ralcheva, and Peter Roosenboom -- Fraudulent behavior by entrepreneurs and borrowers / Christa Hainz -- Fintech and the financing of SMEs and entrepreneurs : from crowdfunding to marketplace lending / Mark Fenwick, Joseph A. McGahery, and Erik P.M. Vermeulen -- Crowdfunding as a font of entrepreneurship : outcomes of reward-based crowdfunding / Ethan Mollick -- Crowdfunding creative ideas : the dynamics of project backers / Venkat Kuppuswamy and Barry L. Bayus -- The regulation of crowdfunding in the United States / C. Steven Bradford -- The regulation of crowdfunding in Europe / Lars Klöhn -- Individual investors' access to crowdinvesting : two regulatory models / John Armour adn Luca Enriques

This text focuses on various types of crowdfunding and the lessons learned from academic research. Crowdfunding, a new and important source of financing for entrepreneurs, fills a funding gap that was traditionally difficult to close. Chapters from expert contributors define and carefully evaluate the various market segments: donation-based and reward-based crowdfunding, crowdinvesting and crowdlending. They further provide an assessment of startups, market structure, as well as backers and investors for each segment.