This paper makes two contributions to research on the new entrepreneurial finance context of equity crowdfunding. First, we compare its regulation around the world and discuss how this impacts the development of markets. Second, we investigate the signaling role played toward external investors by equity retention and social capital. Using a sample of 271 projects listed on the UK platforms Crowdcube and Seedrs in the period 2011-2014, we find that campaigns launched by entrepreneurs (1) who sold smaller fraction of their companies at listing and (2) had more social capital had higher probabilities of success. Our results combine findings in classical entrepreneurial finance settings, like venture capital and IPOs, with evidence from other, non-equity crowdfunding markets.

Finance studies on information cascades, usually in an initial public offering setting, typically differentiate between institutional and retail investors, as this is the only information available to potential backers. Information available through equity crowdfunding platforms includes details on individual investors as they may disclose information about themselves by linking their profile to social networks or websites. Using a sample of 132 equity offerings on Crowdcube in 2014, we show that information cascades among individual investors play a crucial role in crowdfunding campaigns. Investors with a public profile increase the appeal of the offer among early investors, who in turn attract late investors.

The landscape for entrepreneurial finance has changed strongly over the last years. Many new players have entered the arena. This editorial introduces and describes the new players and compares them along the four dimensions: debt or equity, investment goal, investment approach, and investment target. Following this, we discuss the factors explaining the emergence of the new players and group them into supply-and demand-side factors. The editorial gives researchers and practitioners orientation about recent developments in entrepreneurial finance and provides avenues for relevant and fruitful further research.

There are competing theoretical explanations and conflicting empirical evidence for the initial public offering (IPO) underpricing phenomenon in family firms. The behavioral agency model predicts that loss-averse family firms discount their shares more than nonfamily firms to minimize losses of socioemotional wealth (SEW). Conversely, the endowment effect in prospect theory suggests that family owners maximize their financial wealth (FW) by including SEW in perceptions of firm value and demanding a higher IPO price to relinquish it. We reconcile these seemingly incompatible predictions by examining dynamic properties of the reference point in decision framing. Conceiving IPO pricing as a two-stage gamble, we theorize that initial SEW losses entailed by the listing decision increase the disposition of family owners to underprice IPO shares to possibly offset these losses, or "break even." We thereby advance the behavioral agency model with the aversion to loss realization logic to explain how family owners' decision frames and preferences change during the IPO process, depending on initial losses of current SEW and new expectations of future SEW. Our analysis of 1,807 IPOs in Europe supports our theoretical expectations, clarifying the trade-off between FW and SEW and explicating the dynamic properties of mixed gambles in family firms. 1073