Essays on Online Platform and Financial Decisions

Abstract

The chapters in this dissertation use online platform data to study the roles that information plays in shaping financial decisions. In Chapter 1, I show evidence of frictions in the information environment around early-stage investing, and study their impact on new venture finance in the setting of a product launching online platform. In Chapter 2, we show how data from online social networking services can help researchers better understand the effects of social interactions on economic decision making. In Chapter 3, we measure aggregate social networks at the U.S. county-level and U.S. county to foreign country, and document their determinants, and impact on economic and innovation outcomes.