This dataset provides annual, country-level data on debt- and equity-based crowdfunding (digital financing) activity worldwide from 2015 to 2020, together with a constructed index of how clearly each country regulates crowdfunding.
From “Sometimes, Always, Never: Regulatory Clarity and the Development of Digital Financing” — Zhenkai Ran, P. Raghavendra Rau, and Tania Ziegler, Management Science (2025). [DOI]
What’s included
Two country-by-year datasets covering 2015–2020:
- Digital financing dataset — debt- and equity-based crowdfunding volumes (USD) and platform counts by investor type (retail / institutional) and origin (domestic / foreign / total), plus GDP-scaled and log-transformed versions, market-concentration (HHI) measures, and regional/peer-country aggregates.
- Regulatory clarity index — the constructed index of regulatory clarity for debt-based (P2P) and equity-based (ECF) crowdfunding, including adjusted, demand-/supply-side, stringency, switcher, and peer-country variants, and the year each country first introduced regulation.
The replication package also includes the Stata code that reproduces the paper’s tables and a full variable dictionary. The platform-level data are confidential and are not included.
Variable definitions
Per-dataset codebooks (variable names and definitions):
Sources
Crowdfunding activity: Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF). Macro and governance controls: World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI). Regulatory clarity index: constructed by the authors.
Download
Full replication package (data, code, and data dictionary) on GitHub:
github.com/ranzhenkai/crowdfunding-regulatory-clarity →
Citation
Ran, Z., Rau, P. R., & Ziegler, T. (2025). Sometimes, Always, Never: Regulatory Clarity and the Development of Digital Financing. Management Science, 71(9), 8027–8071. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01538