Crowdasset: crowdfunding for policymakers

摘要

Governments across the globe have intervened over the course of several decades to address gaps in the supply of finance for entrepreneurial businesses. These interventions have taken a variety of forms, with the most prominent being loan guarantee schemes, tax incentives for business angels, public sector managed venture capital funds, funding of privately managed venture capital funds and co-investment funds that invest alongside private investors. Governments have scaled up many of these types of interventions in response to the economic crisis precipitated by the coronavirus crisis. There is a considerable body of academic literature that has examined their effectiveness. Although crowdfunding in its various forms is a relatively recent financial instrument - its modern tech-enabled form only existing since 2007 - it has quickly become part of the financial mainstream. It is therefore surprising that there has been very little discussion of ways in which it is being used as a policy instrument by governments. This edited volume comprises 24 chapters of varying lengths, of which 21 are case studies of "crowdfunding in action" - various ways in which policymakers are already using crowdfunding and crowd mechanisms to accelerate innovation and community development. The editors are respectively an academic, a practitioner and a consultant. The contributors are a mix of academics, policy-makers, practitioners and think tank staff.