Crowdfunding is a potentially disruptive way to finance new ventures. At the crossroad of micro-finance and social networking, crowdfunding is undergoing intense scrutiny from scholars and policymakers to understand where it positions in the chain of startup funding. By studying 1127 technology projects posted on four distinct crowdfunding platforms, we highlight the factors explaining fundraising success over failure and the determinants of overfunding. We find that an increase in the project funding goal is correlated with a lower probability and extent of success, that project duration increases the chances of success, and that chances of success are positively related to the dollar amount contributed per day. The latter results supports the view according to which the crowdfunding patter follows the so-called "reinforcement model", as opposed to the substitution one (Shang and Croson, 2009)

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Sustainable entrepreneurship is raising and already providing a response to environmental, social and economic issues. However, it is still at disadvantage when seeks funding from traditional providers of capital. Crowdfunding has opened a new possibility for closing such funding gap. This study investigates the role of crowdfunding as a creative source of capital for ventures with sustainable orientation. The analysis seeks to understand to what extent project characteristics influence the ability to raise funds on the world leading rewardcrowdfunding platform, and, importantly, to explain their survival post-campaign. Results show that the perceived sustainable mission positively influences the outcome of the campaign. An average survival rate over 70% after one year of operations suggests the creation of healthy sustainability ventures through crowdfunding. Furthermore, a higher percentage of female cofounders improves the chances of success during and after the crowdfunding campaign. The paper discusses implications for the success of crowdfunding campaigns and their development post-campaign in sustainable entrepreneurship.

This paper studies the effects of having multiple large shareholders who share the control of firms, by analysing a unique dataset of Italian shareholders' agreements (voting trusts). We investigate the separation between ownership and control granted by such agreements, showing that, on average, a voting trust owning 52 per cent of the total company's cash-flow rights is able to exercise up to 87 per cent of the total board rights; the wedge is particularly beneficial to the largest shareholder within the voting trust who is able to get the majority of board rights despite owning only a minority fraction of the company's cash-flow rights. Then, an event-study analysis of a sample of voting trusts' announcements is performed. The results support the "entrenchment effects" hypothesis (Stulz, 1988) linking the ownership structure and the firm value, and are consistent with the view that, in Italy, voting trust agreements are mainly aimed at both protecting controlling shareholders from hostile takeovers and entrenching incumbent management.