Erasure coding (EC) is a well-known redundancy technique used to prevent data loss in distributed systems. They typically reduce storage overhead significantly compared to replication. However, they are more complex to use than replication in terms of both deployment and data repair in the event of node failure, particularly in the context of decentralized distributed systems. In this paper, we introduce ALTOCUMULUS, an erasure-coded storage system that efficiently and effectively integrates Reed-Solomon codes on top of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). ALTOCUMULUS implements efficient parallel data writing and dynamic data retrieval that adapts its chunk selection according to nodes' performance at runtime. It also provides optimized data repair by enabling nodes to perform repair tasks evenly in parallel. Evaluation results show that ALTOCUMULUS significantly improves write performance compared to replication and alternative EC implementations in IPFS, reaching 89.7% and 92.9%, respectively. In addition, ALTOCUMULUS achieves comparable performance to replication for reads and data repair, while outperforming it in heterogeneous environments and when repairing large datasets.

We use novel entrepreneur-backer data to study the extent to which spillovers arise between projects displayed on crowdfunding platforms. We find that backers decide to back a particular project based on past contributions not only to that project-as documented by prior work-but also to other contemporaneous projects-a novel result. Our difference-in-differences estimates indicate that such "cross-project spillovers" account for 4% in the increase of contributions that projects generate on a daily basis. We show that recurrent backers are an important transmission channel of cross-project spillovers: By initiating social learning about project existence and quality, recurrent backers encourage future funding by other backers. Our results demonstrate that even though contemporaneous projects compete for funding, they jointly benefit from their common presence on the platform. These findings have significant implications for digital platform management and competition dynamics.

Does partisanship influence loan allocation through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)? We examine the 2020 Presidential campaign contributions made by lenders' employees as a partisanship measure and leverage the PPP's phased implementation under both the Trump and the Biden administrations. We find that partisan misalignment increases lending, particularly to small and first-time PPP borrowers, as well as those in Republican areas. Misalignment is also associated with higher payroll coverage for small businesses. Our findings are consistent with Republican-leaning lenders viewing the PPP's 2021 phase as a legacy policy of the prior administration, shedding new light on the partisan-alignment phenomenon in finance. (JEL D72, G21, G28, G32, G38, H12, H81)

We investigate the drivers of vote delegation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), using the Uniswap governance DAO as a laboratory. We show that parties with fewer self-owned votes and those affiliated with the controlling venture capital firm, Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), receive more vote delegations. These patterns suggest that while the Uniswap ecosystem values decentralization, a16z may engage in window-dressing around it. Moreover, we find that an active and successful track record in submitting improvement proposals, especially in the final stage, leads to more vote delegations, indicating that delegation in DAOs is at least partly reputation- or merit-based. Combined, our findings provide new insights into how governance and decentralization operate in DeFi.

Abstract Crowdfunding is the process of raising capital online from a large audience. It has emerged since the mid-2000s as a popular funding source for innovative ideas and projects. Crowdfunding encompasses various forms, including reward-based, equity-based, and lending-based models. The key actors in crowdfunding are entrepreneurs seeking capital, contributors constituting the “crowd,” and the platform that facilitates the interaction between them. Entrepreneurs primarily resort to crowdfunding because they can raise capital at a lower cost compared to traditional funding sources and acquire valuable information from the crowd. As for the crowd, the appeal of crowdfunding lies in the community benefits and expanded access to economic opportunities compared to those available offline. Platforms play a crucial role in addressing asymmetric information and coordination problems. Asymmetric information gives rise to informational externalities, where contributors attempt to infer project quality from the decisions of other contributors. Coordination problems stem from the interdependence between entrepreneurs’ and contributors’ decisions, leading to payoff externalities. The interplay between informational and payoff externalities influences campaign dynamics and the growth of crowdfunding platforms. The market for blockchain-based crowdfunding has also developed since the mid-2010s. Platforms can leverage blockchain technology to enhance the transactional efficiency of the crowdfunding process and facilitate the emergence of secondary markets. In addition, early evidence from the United States indicates positive real effects of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding activity is associated with both increased venture capital investment and heightened entrepreneurship.

Democracy matters for international merger activity. Using a sample of 101,834 cross-border deals announced between 1985 and 2018, we show that merger flows predominantly involve acquirers from more democratic countries than their targets. This result is primarily driven by a "pull"factor: firms in countries with weaker democratic institutions attract more cross- border deals. We find evidence of bonding as the key mechanism behind this effect. The democracy effect is stronger when target countries have weaker corporate governance standards. Furthermore, target abnormal returns around deal announcements increase with the difference in democracy between acquirer and target countries. Importantly, differences in investor protection or economic development do not directly explain the democracy effect. Combined, our findings imply that democracy is a fundamental, yet previously overlooked, determinant of cross-border mergers.

Using panel analysis for a large cross-section of countries, we find that liquidity creation by banks is positively associated with economic growth at country and industry levels. Liquidity creation boosts tangible, but not intangible investment and does not contribute to growth in countries with a high share of industries reliant on intangible assets. These findings are consistent with a theoretical model in which liquidity creation fosters investment only if it is sufficiently tangible. Our results shed light on important heterogeneities in the role of banks in the economic development process and their limited role in countries’ transition to knowledge economies.

We show that politically connected banks influence economic activity. We exploit shocks to individual banks’ political capital following close US congressional elections. We find that regional output growth increases when banks active in the region experience an average positive shock to their political capital. The effect is economically large, but temporary, and is due to lower restructuring in the economy rather than increased productivity. We show that eased lending conditions (especially for riskier firms) can account for the growth effect. Our analysis is a first attempt to directly link the politics and finance literature with the finance and growth literature.

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Graph processing is a popular computing model for big data analytics. Emerging big data applications are often maintained in multiple geographically distributed (geo-distributed) data centers (DCs) to provide low-latency services to global users. Graph processing in geo-distributed DCs suffers from costly inter-DC data communications. Furthermore, due to increasing privacy concerns, geo-distribution imposes diverse, strict, and often asymmetric privacy regulations that constrain geo-distributed graph processing. Existing graph processing systems fail to address these two challenges. In this paper, we design and implement PGPregel , which is an end-to-end system that provides privacy-preserving graph processing in geo-distributed DCs with low latency and high utility. To ensure privacy, PGPregel smartly integrates Differential Privacy into graph processing systems with the help of two core techniques, namely sampling and combiners , to reduce the amount of inter-DC data transfer while preserving good accuracy of graph processing results. We implement our design in Giraph and evaluate it in real cloud DCs. Results show that PGPregel can preserve the privacy of graph data with low overhead and good accuracy.

Speculative execution can significantly improve the performance of Big Data applications by launching other copies of stragglers (slow tasks). Stragglers detection plays an important role in the effectiveness of speculative execution. The methods employed to detect stragglers use the information extracted from the last received heartbeats which may be outdated when triggering detection. This, in turn, can mislead Big Data analytic systems to make wrong detection with high inaccuracy. To shed the light on this issue, we carry out extensive simulations to identify how heartbeat arrival, task starting times, and detection methods impact the accuracy of stragglers detection in Big Data analytic systems. We reveal that the asynchrony in heartbeat arrivals not only lead to marking normal tasks as stragglers (false positives) but can also result in overlooking real stragglers (false negatives).

Download This Paper Open PDF in Browser Add Paper to My Library Share: Permalink Using these links will ensure access to this page indefinitely Copy URL Crowdfunding Entrepreneurship: Evidence from US Counties 52 Pages Posted: 18 Oct 2022 See all articles by Thomas LambertThomas LambertRotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University; Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM)Aleksandrina RalchevaDelft University of TechnologyPeter RoosenboomRotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University; Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) Date Written: October 11, 2022 Abstract We show that the rise of crowdfunding over the past decade fostered entrepreneurship and output growth in the United States. We develop measures of crowdfunding activity at the county level based on all projects successfully funded on Kickstarter (the largest US platform). We find that an increase in Kickstarter activity spurs entry (through forming new businesses and creating jobs), especially in industries that need less starting capital and that rely more on external sources of funding. Crowdfunding also supports the further development of young businesses by increasing their establishment size. Moreover, we uncover that crowdfunding boosts entrepreneurship by reducing geographic and demographic frictions in offline entrepreneurial finance. Our findings are consistent with the idea that crowdfunding promotes the “democratization” of entry. We present early evidence that this crowdfunding-entrepreneurship nexus matters significantly for growth. Keywords: crowdfunding, entrepreneurship, economic growth, startup capital, Kickstarter JEL Classification: G23, L26 Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation Lambert, Thomas and Ralcheva, Aleksandrina and Roosenboom, Peter, Crowdfunding Entrepreneurship: Evidence from US Counties (October 11, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4244733 Thomas Lambert (Contact Author) Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University ( email ) P.O. Box 1738Rotterdam, 3000 DRNetherlands HOME PAGE: http://www.thomaslambert.org Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) ( email ) P.O. Box 17383000 DR RotterdamNetherlands Aleksandrina Ralcheva Delft University of Technology ( email ) P.O. Box 50152600 GB DelftNetherlands Peter Roosenboom Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University ( email ) P.O. Box 1738Room T09-563000 DR RotterdamNetherlands+31 10 40 82255 (Phone) Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) ( email ) P.O. Box 17383000 DR RotterdamNetherlands Download This Paper Open PDF in Browser Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN? Place Job Opening Paper statistics Downloads 13 Abstract Views 49 PlumX Metrics Related eJournals Entrepreneurship, Innovation, & Growth eJournal Follow Entrepreneurship, Innovation, & Growth eJournal Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic FOLLOWERS 1,707 PAPERS 7,236 Entrepreneurship & Economics eJournal Follow Entrepreneurship & Economics eJournal Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic FOLLOWERS 1,349 PAPERS 11,135 Entrepreneurship & Finance eJournal Follow Entrepreneurship & Finance eJournal Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic FOLLOWERS 1,299 PAPERS 6,715 Economic Growth eJournal Follow Economic Growth eJournal Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic FOLLOWERS 636 PAPERS 15,298 This Journal is curated by: William Easterly at New York University - Department of Economics Feedback Feedback to SSRN Feedback (required) Email (required) Submit If you need immediate assistance, call 877-SSRNHelp (877 777 6435) in the United States, or +1 212 448 2500 outside of the United States, 8:30AM to 6:00PM U.S. Eastern, Monday - Friday. Submit a Paper Section 508 Text Only Pages SSRN Quick Links SSRN Solutions Research Paper Series Conference Papers Partners in Publishing Jobs & Announcements Newsletter Sign Up SSRN Rankings Top Papers Top Authors Top Organizations About SSRN SSRN Objectives Network Directors Presidential Letter Announcements Contact us FAQs Copyright Terms and Conditions Privacy Policy We use cookies to help provide and enhance our service and tailor content. To learn more, visit Cookie Settings. This page was processed by aws-apollo-5dc in 0.233 seconds

We study how banks’ special interests affect the resolution of failed banks. Using a sample of FDIC auctions between 2007 and 2016, we find that bidding banks that lobby regulators have a higher probability of winning an auction. However, the FDIC incurs larger costs in such auctions, amounting to 24.8 percent of the total resolution losses. We also show that lobbying winners match less well with acquired banks and display worse post-acquisition performance than their non-lobbying counterparts, suggesting that lobbying interferes with an efficient allocation of failed banks. Our results provide new insights into the bank resolution process and the role of special interests.

Since the 1980s, many countries have reformed their central banks to enhance operational independence. Using biographical data, press coverage, and expert opinions, we show that these reforms are not systematically associated with more independent governor appointments; if anything, appointments become more politically aligned, consistent with a “seesaw effect.” More independent appointees are associated with higher de facto independence and greater monetary policy transparency. Eight years after appointment, inflation is 4 percentage points lower relative to a plausible counterfactual. The lower inflation does not come at the expense of weaker macroeconomic performance.

This paper provides a comparative institutional analysis of the leading approaches to addressing the market power of large digital platforms: (1) the traditional US antitrust approach; (2) imposition of ex ante conduct rules such as those in the EU’s Digital Markets Act and several bills recently advanced by the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives; and (3) ongoing agency oversight, exemplified by the UK’s newly established “Digital Markets Unit.” After identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, this paper examines how they might play out in the context of digital platforms. It first examines whether antitrust is too slow and indeterminate to tackle market power concerns arising from digital platforms. It next considers possible error costs resulting from the most prominent proposed conduct rules. It then shows how three features of the agency oversight model—its broad focus, political susceptibility, and perpetual control—render it particularly vulnerable to rent-seeking efforts and agency capture. The paper concludes that antitrust’s downsides (relative indeterminacy and slowness) are likely to be less significant than those of ex ante conduct rules (large error costs resulting from high informational requirements) and ongoing agency oversight (rent-seeking and agency capture).

This paper posits that distinguishing security token offerings (STOs) from initial coin offerings (ICOs) is important for the study of entrepreneurial finance. We first provide a working definition of a security token and present an overview of the STO market using a unique STO sample. The STO activity developed after the end of the ICO market bubble. The STO market is, however, still a nascent market. STOs are geographically dispersed but concentrated in jurisdictions with accommodating securities laws. Next, we explore STO success factors. We show that various issuer and offering characteristics traditionally used in the ICO literature also matter for STO success. We also find that success is associated with good governance practices, consistent with the corporate finance literature. We conclude by discussing the implications of native digital securities, the next generation of security tokens, for entrepreneurial finance.

This Article provides a comparative institutional analysis of the three leading approaches to addressing the market power of large digital platforms: (1) traditional antitrust, the approach thus far taken in the United States; (2) ex ante conduct rules, the approach embraced by the European Union’s Digital Markets Act and several bills recently advanced by the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives; and (3) ongoing agency oversight, the approach embraced by the United Kingdom with its newly established “Digital Markets Unit.” After identifying the general pros and cons of each approach, the Article examines how they are likely to play out in the context of digital platforms. It first examines whether antitrust is indeed too slow and indeterminate to tackle market power concerns arising from digital platforms, as proponents of ex ante conduct rules and agency oversight have suggested. It next considers possible error costs resulting from the most prominent proposed conduct rules: (1) structural separations and line of business restrictions; (2) bans on self-preferencing by platforms; (3) requirements to allow platform users to remove pre-installed software, “side-load” apps, and use alternative payment systems to make purchases on the platform; and (4) data portability, data sharing, and platform interoperability mandates. It then shows how three features of the agency oversight model — its broad focus, political susceptibility, and perpetual control — render it particularly vulnerable to rent-seeking efforts and agency capture. The article ultimately concludes that antitrust’s downsides (relative indeterminacy and slowness) are likely to be less significant than those of ex ante conduct rules (large error costs resulting from high informational requirements) and ongoing agency oversight (rent-seeking and agency capture).

This paper examines the incidence of special interests in the allocation of loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). We find that lobbying at the firm and industry levels helps obtain larger PPP loans during the pandemic. We also observe that PPP lending is more responsive to lobbying in ideologically less conservative areas as well as in industries less affected by the pandemic. Our findings are consistent with the notion that lobbying firms have experience in navigating administrative and policy complexity and can thus benefit more from aid provided under the PPP.

Maximum Sustainable Throughput (MST) refers to the amount of data that a Data Stream Processing (DSP) system can ingest while keeping stable performance. It has been acknowledged as an accurate metric to evaluate the performance of stream data processing. Yet, existing operators placements continue to focus on latency and throughput, not MST, as main performance objective when deploying stream data applications in the Edge. In this paper, we argue that MST should be used as an optimization objective when placing operators. This is specially important in the Edge, where network bandwidth and data streams are highly dynamic. We demonstrate that through the design and evaluation of a MST-driven operators placement (based on constraint programming) for stream data applications. Through simulations, we show how existing placement strategies that target overall communications reduction often fail to keep up with the rate of data streams. Importantly, the constraint programming-based operators placement is able to sustain up to 5x increased data ingestion compared to baseline strategies.