ID: #2053
Presenter Symposium: The trust machine? The promise of blockchain-based algorithmic governance of exchange
Date: Tuesday, Aug 13 2019 1:15PM - 2:45PM
Location: Boston Hynes Convention Center Room 208
Distributed ledger technologies such as blockchains allow, under certain conditions, economic exchange without the need for actor trust. Thus, they can facilitate mutually beneficial transactions that trust mechanisms or institutions fail to support. Blockchains can significantly lower the costs of verification and facilitate contract enforcement in digital markets. When verification becomes easy and cheap, transaction intermediaries that provide contract fulfillment services may become redundant, enhancing efficiency and enabling decentralized marketplaces for digital goods at a large scale. At the same time, blockchains may create markets for goods and services that previously were produced either within firms or through volunteer labor. This symposium explores the promise of blockchain technology of enabling "trustless" transactions and carves out where and why trust will still be needed even in blockchain-based exchange. The four papers focus on the potential organizational implications of blockchain technologies, ranging from the boundaries of the firm to collective action with externalities and to entrepreneurial finance. The studies complement each other by providing theoretical, technical, and empirical perspectives. The papers converge around the argument that blockchain-type verification technologies are likely to enhance trust and facilitate transactions that previously may have failed, but they do not obviate the need for relational governance. Trust is altered, not made redundant, by distributed ledger technologies.
Papers:
- Smart Contracts and Firm Boundaries (Hanna Halaburda & Yannis Bakos)
- Revisiting Ostrom in the Age of the Blockchain (Aija Leiponen, Marc-David Seidel and Llewellyn Thomas)
- (How) Can blockchain technology enhance trust? (Peter Altmann)
- Blockchains as trust-free systems? Exploring the boundaries of trust (Daniel Obermeier & Joachim Henkel)
Discussant:
- Chris Forman (Cornell University)
We look forward to seeing you all there!
Organizers: Joachim Henkel, Aija Leiponen and Llewellyn Thomas
*** Apologies for cross-posting ***