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Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act 2012 (the JOBS Act) was passed in 2012. JOBS Act enables emerging growth companies (EGCs) to go public without being subject to the full vigorous range of regulations applicable to publicly traded companies. The purpose of this paper is to study financial performance, Tobin’s Q-ratio and value relevance of EGCs.

The sample includes 620 IPOs during the period from April 5, 2009 to April 5, 2015. The analyses use firm-quarter observations.

The results show that EGCs have both lower financial performance, and a lower Tobin’s Q-ratio compared to the financial performance and Tobin’s Q-ratio of non-EGCs. Moreover, the value relevance of accounting information for EGCs is lower than the value relevance of accounting information for non-EGCs.

This study contributes to the accounting regulation literature by documenting the inferior market performance and financial information quality of EGCs, i.e., the unintended consequences of the JOBS Act.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary explanation of “crowdfunding,” as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, subject to more specific rules that will be issued by the SEC later in 2012.

The paper provides an introduction to crowdfunding followed by preliminary explanations of the criteria for securities offerings that are exempted from traditional registration, requirements for brokers or funding portals that serve as crowdfunding intermediaries, disclosure and other requirements for the issuing company, the types of companies that would be likely crowdfunding issuers, significant risks and pitfalls potential crowdfunding issuers need to consider, and the potential effects of crowdfunding on a company's prospects for later‐stage funding such as venture capital.

The success of crowdfunding will likely depend on whether the rules to be defined by the SEC allow for a lean, efficient process for early stage capital raising or a complicated set of rules that makes crowdfunding unappealing or costly to startups and small issuers.

The paper provides practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

Significant research works explore the broadly used and successful rewards-based crowdfunding (CF) platforms, including the key motives for both creators and funders. This paper aims to examine whether the motives identified by previous researchers for rewards-based CF also apply to peer-to-peer (P2P) CF.

This research includes a review of current laws, as well as a focus on participant motives to participate in P2P CF. It also looks at how these motives differ between P2P CF and rewards-based CF. The CF platforms were then analyzed by characteristic to identify the current qualities of P2P platforms.

This research shows that though there are some common underlying motives, the differences will demand a new participant approach and a P2P CF platform that are notably different from those that support rewards-based CF.

This research is limited by the relative newness of both the Jumpstart our Business Startups Act and the P2P CF sites.

As more P2P CF platforms are created, additional research on the ability to manage investors, create effective project plans and identify keys to successful projects will further the understanding.

There is little research today, however, that connects the qualities of successful rewards-based CF to successful P2P CF platforms. In addition, regulations connected with P2P CF are not clearly defined and enforcement is not well understood.

To summarize the technical guidelines for complying with the final crowdfunding rules issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) after more than three years of consideration pursuant to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (“JOBS Act”) to permit companies to offer and sell securities through crowdfunding.

Gives an overview of the JOBS Act and the proposed and final crowdfunding rules issued by the SEC; explains how start-ups and other companies can qualify under the final rules; summarizes the disclosure requirements for the issuers; explains the final rules regarding intermediary platforms; and summarizes the proposed rules to facilitate intrastate and regional securities offerings.

While new crowdfunding rules will enable start-up companies to raise money through the Internet in ways that were previously prohibited, the success of these rules in helping start-ups to raise capital easily and efficiently is still to be seen, as there are still significant restrictions and procedural hurdles for a would-be crowdfunding issuer, which makes crowdfunding costly, especially compared to other forms of capital raising.

Provides an overview and summary of the rules from experienced securities lawyers so that start-up companies and investors would be able to comply with the new rules.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the section of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act related to information dissemination by sell-side security analysts. The paper analyzes how the abolishment of the quiet period requirements for emerging growth companies (EGCs) changes the analyst initiation timing and market expectation of and reaction to the issuance of the analyst recommendations.

This paper considers the effect of the abolishment of the quiet period requirements on analyst coverage initiations for EGCs with IPOs between January 2006 and December 2015 using regression analyses and probability models.

The results confirm the current anecdotal and empirical evidence that a shorter, de facto, quiet period exists. Analyst issue stronger average ratings for EGCs than for similar firms with IPOs before the JOBS Act. EGCs with initiations from multiple analysts also experience stronger positive market reaction than the firms with initial offerings before the JOBS Act. The market seems to anticipate which EGCs will have initiations and particularly which EGCs will have initiations from multiple analysts. The investors, however, do not fully anticipate the strength of actual recommendations.

This paper is important for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to understand how analysts impact the financial markets, how timing of analyst initiations affects stock prices of EGCs and what firm characteristics play a role in securing analyst coverage shortly after initial offerings.

This paper adds to the emerging literature on consequences of and changes brought by the JOBS Act. Specifically, this paper extends the limited literature on analyst initiations issued for firms with IPOs following the JOBS Act, timing of those initiations and magnitude of the market’s response to the initiations.

The purpose of this paper is to review the principal provisions of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which was enacted in April 2012 and represents significant legislative reform of securities regulation in the USA.

The paper examines the modified US securities regulatory regime introduced for initial public offerings and SEC reporting by a newly designated class of smaller securities issuers referred to as “emerging growth companies” and summarizes reforms to the regulation of capital‐raising transactions by small issuers and other companies that are intended to facilitate the creation of new jobs by easing regulatory burdens.

The JOBS Act should meet its objective of providing emerging growth companies, at reduced cost, with an orderly transition from a private existence with relatively few securities‐law concerns to a public one with numerous compliance obligations. Companies also will have greater opportunities to access capital through the availability of additional exemptions from Securities Act registration and the elimination of some restrictions on offering‐related communications with investors. The relaxation or elimination of long‐accepted methods for minimizing fraud and abuse in securities offerings, however, could result in a significant increase in investment scams and other wrongdoing.

The paper provides expert guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

Title II of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act aims to make it easier for new ventures to raise funds from accredited investors via equity crowdfunding. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether Title II equity crowdfunding represents an opportunity for women-owned companies (those that have one or more female owners/founders) to raise capital at rates similar to companies owned by men.

The authors conduct an exploratory analysis using a data set containing 6,234 Title II equity crowdfunded offerings aggregated across 17 crowdfunding platforms between September 2013 and December 2015.

The authors find that women-owned companies constitute only 15.2 per cent of the ventures seeking funding in this data set; however, gender had no effect on the likelihood of successful fundraising under Title II.

This study is the first to examine the roll of gender on the success of equity crowdfunding campaigns the USA. It provides empirical evidence that crowdfunding has had limited impact on democratizing access to capital for woman-owned startups and small businesses. The data reveal that woman-owned companies are underrepresented in Title II equity crowdfunding to an even greater extent than they are underrepresented in angel and venture capital (VC) investments. The results of this study also highlight the importance of examining the role of gender in equity crowdfunding across different countries.

This study aims to examine the effect of reducing disclosure and auditing requirements on audit quality, auditor effort and auditor conservatism. The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012 is used as a setting for this research. The JOBS Act aimed to boost economic growth by easing emerging growth companies’ (EGCs) access to capital markets. The Act provides scaled disclosure and auditing provisions and exemptions for EGCs.

Using data from Capital IQ, CRSP and Audit Analytics on EGCs and matching non-EGCs between 2012 and 2018, this study assesses the effect of such reduced disclosure and audit requirements on audit quality, auditor effort and auditor conservatism.

The findings denote that while audit quality and auditor effort are lower for EGCs, auditor conservatism is not different for EGCs as compared to non-EGCs.

This study expands the current research by providing evidence on the impact of reduced reporting and auditing requirements on auditor conservatism and audit quality, in addition to auditor effort in EGC engagements.

Since May 2016, small firms have been able to issue debt and equity securities in accordance with the Securities and Exchange Commission's “Regulation Crowdfunding”. This regulation provides unsophisticated investors a chance to participate in the securities markets, and it gives small businesses an opportunity to raise funds. This paper investigates the determinants of crowdfunding success, security design in a crowdfunding setting, the amount of crowdfunding campaign proceeds and campaign duration.

The sample used in this study is based on 750 completed securities crowdfunding offerings that were launched between May 2016 and May 2018. The data on crowdfunding issues were webscraped from Form C filings available through SEC EDGAR filing system. Additional data were hand-collected from a variety of platforms that list and aggregate crowdfunding offerings.

We show that relatively larger and more profitable companies have a better chance to achieve crowdfunding success. We find that the issuance of equity results in a lower probability of success compared to issuing debt. In addition, the issuance of equity is negatively correlated with the amount of proceeds from a crowdfunding campaign. A novel finding is that a choice of a funding instrument has a negligible impact on the amount of proceeds. This finding, combined with reduced probability of success for equity issuers, can be interpreted as a signal to rely more on debt and convertibles when designing crowdfunding campaigns.

Organized under “Regulation Crowdfunding,” the US securities-based crowdfunding market has been operating for several years. Relative to other securities markets it is still considered to be in its infancy. Given a relatively small data sample, the results have to be interpreted with caution.

The paper shows that small businesses and unsophisticated investors can benefit from securities-based crowdfunding, which is subject to oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Although the mission of the regulator is to protect investors, the SEC took on a rather relaxed approach in regulating types of instruments used in crowdfunding. Our paper shows that equities, including “Simple Agreements For Future Equity” (SAFEs) might not be the best choice for crowdfunding success. This sentiment is mirrored in law literature which considers securities known as SAFEs more suitable for venture capital campaigns rather than for crowdfunding.

The paper adds value to the novel field of securities-based crowdfunding by testing several hypotheses on the crowdfunding success, the amount of proceeds and campaign duration.