On online social networks such as Facebook, massive self-disclosure by users has attracted the attention of Industry players and policymakers worldwide. Despite the Impressive scope of this phenomenon, very little Is understood about what motivates users to disclose personal Information. Integrating focus group results Into a theoretical privacy calculus framework, we develop and empirically test a Structural Equation Model of self-disclosure with 259 subjects. We find that users are primarily motivated to disclose Information because of the convenience of maintaining and developing relationships and platform enjoyment. Countervailing these benefits, privacy risks represent a critical barrier to information disclosure. However, users’ perception of risk can be mitigated by their trust in the network provider and availability of control options. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for network providers.

This paper analyses the substantially growing markets for crowdfunding, in which retail investors lend to borrowers without financial intermediaries. Critics suggest these markets allow sophisticated investors to take advantage of unsophisticated investors. The growth and viability of these markets critically depends on the underlying incentives. We provide evidence of perverse incentives in crowdfunding that are not fully recognized by the market. In particular we look at group leader bids in the presence of origination fees and find that these bids are (wrongly) perceived as a signal of good loan quality, resulting in lower interest rates. Yet these loans actually have higher default rates. These adverse incentives are overcome only with sufficient skin in the game and when there are no origination fees. The results provide important implications for crowdfunding, its structure and regulation.

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This paper analyzes how banks react to the financial crisis and a deteriorating solvency and liquidity condition in their investment decisions and the composition of their financial assets. We use a novel dataset, which comprises all security investments by all German banks on a security-by-security basis between 2006 and 2011, and analyze whether and how banks use sales and purchases of these securities as the most direct and immediate way to change their overall asset structure. We find that banks substantially change their investment strategies with the beginning of the financial crisis. In particular, they shift their investments towards securities that are eligible as collateral in central bank credit operations and towards domestic securities. These patterns hold in particular for less healthy, lowly rated and large banks. Furthermore, banks with substantial exposure to troubled assets as for example Greek government bonds are particularly active in this perspective. Our results highlight the substantial changes in bank portfolios following the financial crisis, which constitute a major part of their assets, and have important implications for the current regulatory as well as policy debate on banks' investment decisions.

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