cover image: Everyone Steps Back? The Widespread Retraction of Crowd-Funding Support for Minority Creators when Migration Fear is High

Everyone Steps Back? The Widespread Retraction of Crowd-Funding Support for Minority Creators when Migration Fear is High

1 Nov 2024

We study funding gaps on Kickstarter across multiple ethnic groups from 2009-2021. Scaling the concept of racially salient events, we quantify the close co-movement of minority funding gaps in crowd-funding to inflamed political rhetoric surrounding migration. The funding gap for minorities more than doubles in the most inflamed periods compared to baseline. Results are especially acute for Hispanic creators. Distant, mostly white backers are typically important for projects reaching a critical threshold of funding support. Retractions in support for minority creators during tense periods are even spatially, as present in liberal cities as conservative ones.
financial institutions industrial organization corporate finance microeconomics other financial economics labor economics firm behavior labor studies demography and aging productivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship households and firms accounting, marketing, and personnel

Authors

John (Jianqiu) Bai, William R. Kerr, Chi Wan, Alptug Y. Yorulmaz

Acknowledgements & Disclosure
Kerr is the corresponding author. We are grateful to Sabrina Howell, Dan Marom, Alicia Robb, and Jun Wong for sharing data for this project. We also thank Peter Blair, Solène Delecourt, Stefano DellaVigna, Michael Ewens, Rob Fairlie, Pauline Grosjean, Bart Hamilton, Sabrina Howell, Hans Hvide, Josh Lerner, Dan Marom, Federico Masera, Matt Marx, Ethan Mollick, Abhishek Nagaraj, Ramana Nanda, David Robinson, Marco Tabellini, Rick Townsend, Emmanuel Yimfor, and seminar participants at Bentley University, Harvard University, National Bureau of Economic Research, Northeastern University, University of California Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania Wharton, and Washington University in St. Louis for insights. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3386/w33097
Pages
70
Published in
United States of America

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