近日，东南大学经济管理学院物流管理工程系的薛巍立老师与浙江大学博士生胡俊铭及其合作团队在UTD24期刊《Production and Operations Management》上发表了题为“Reward-Based Crowdfunding vs. Initial Coin Offerings”的学术论文。该论文从代理成本的角度出发，深入探讨了奖励型众筹和ICO众筹的本质差异，为创业者在融资模式选择上提供了重要的理论支持和实践指导。
皮皮侠相关数据：
【数字经济】上市公司供应链数字化数据
Inspired by emerging financing techniques that offer additionalfinancing
options for entrepreneurs, we establish a stylized model to compare two jprevalentcrowdfunding strategies: reward-based crowdfunding and Initial Coin Offerings(ICOs). First, we highlight that the fundamental difference between rewardsed crowdfunding and ICO lies in the distinct types of price distortion, resuling indifferent agency costs. Specifically, compared to the first-best benchmarlk, rewardbased crowdfunding sets a lower funding price to attract more consumerto pre-order,while ICO sets a higher market price due to speculators' revenuesharing in the market stage. Second, we show that the financing limit (i.e., the maximum adsraised) of reward-based crowdfunding is driven by the platform traffic, vWhereas that of ICO is driven by the marginal production cost. Therefore, even with numerous
speculators, ICO may result in a lower financing limit than reward-based crowdfunding when the platform traffic or the marginal production cost is igh. Third,
we explore how products'cost structures shape entrepreneurs' financiing preferences. ICO suits intangible products with high fixed cost and low rnarginal production cost, while reward-based crowdfunding aligns better with products exhibiting the opposite cost structure. Finally, we extend our model to show therobustness of our findings and offer some additional insights. For exampleO may amplify the risk of market uncertainty compared to reward-based crowdffinding Security Token Offering (STO) benefits from the absence of agency costs between the entrepreneur and speculators compared to ICO while it may suffer fromequity loss particularly in risky and regulated markets, etc.
在数字化时代，众筹作为一种新型的融资模式，为众多创业者提供了筹集资金的新途径。其中，奖励型众筹和ICO众筹是两种备受关注的模式。奖励型众筹通过预售产品的方式吸引消费者参与，而ICO众筹则基于区块链技术，通过发行通证来筹集资金。然而，这两种模式在代理成本方面存在显著的差异，对于创业者而言，如何在两者之间做出选择成为了一个亟待解决的问题。针对这一问题，胡俊铭领衔的研究团队进行了深入的分析。他们发现，奖励型众筹和ICO众筹的代理成本来源不同。奖励型众筹类似于债权融资，通过预售产品以较低的价格补偿参与者，其代理成本主要来源于较低的预售产品价格；而ICO众筹则类似于权益融资，通过发行通证以较高的产品销售价格补偿投资者，其代理成本则来源于较高的产品销售价格。
此外，研究团队还进一步探讨了产品成本和平台流量对代理成本的影响。他们指出，这两个因素是影响创业者选择融资模式的关键因素。具体来说，当产品成本较高时，创业者更倾向于选择奖励型众筹以降低代理成本；而当平台流量较大时，ICO众筹则更具吸引力，因为较高的流量可以带来更多的投资者和更高的融资效率。基于以上研究，论文为创业者提供了融资模式选择的建议。这些建议不仅具有理论价值，更在实践中得到了成功创业项目的验证。该研究成果不仅为理解奖励型众筹和ICO众筹的差异性提供了理论解释，也为进一步研究基于区块链技术的分布式平台管理奠定了坚实的基础。
