Professor Dr. Lars Hornuf has published a new article in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal under the title "Marketplace lending of small- and medium-sized enterprises." The article emerged in collaboration with Prof. Douglas Cumming from Florida Atlantic University. The Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal is a FT-50 List Journal and ranked “A” in the VHB-JOURQUAL3 Ranking.

When evaluating Internet-based loan project of small and medium size enterprises (SME), lenders can rely on easy-to-understand risk ratings or more sophisticated financial information. The authors investigate lenders decisions and its effect on loan funding success on the marketplace-lending platform Zencap. The data set has been provided by the platform Zencap and includes 414 SME marketplace loans and 2,196 lenders. The data examined provide strong support for the importance of simple platform ratings in influencing investor behavior, while the effect of more detailed financial information is less pronounced, controlling for relevant variables. Higher interest rates appear more profitable to investors without any serious concern about non-repayment.

The full article can be downloaded here.