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Speaker: Hanna Halaburda, Associate Professor, NYU
Title: How Blockchain Tokens are Changing Platform Economics
Abstract: The development of Blockchains technologies, including smart contracts and cryptographic tokens, have a potential to change the competition between platforms. In this presentation, based on a couple of projects, I will discuss how utility tokens can help new platforms enter the market, and how governance tokens can help platforms to increase social welfare. I will also discuss limitations of these technologies in improving platform strategy and competition.
Based on:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4028849
and
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4221512
Bio:
Hanna Halaburda joined New York University Stern School of Business as an Associate Professor of Technology, Operations and Statistics in September 2019.
In her research, Professor Halaburda studies how technology changes economic forces and thus affects business models and interactions in the marketplace. One strand of her work focuses on competition between digital platforms. Since 2011, she has built a research program in digital currencies and blockchain technologies, including analyses of incentives in consensus protocols, cryptocurrency adoption, smart contracts, and token issuance. Professor Halaburda’s work has been published in Management Science, RAND, American Economic Journal, Games and Economic Behavior, and other academic journals. In 2015 she co-authored Beyond Bitcoin: The Economics of Digital Currency, the first book analyzing digital currencies from the economic perspective. The book’s 2nd edition, co-authored with Miklos Sarvary and Guillaume Haeringer, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022.
Prior to joining NYU Stern, Professor Halaburda was an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, and a senior economist at the Bank of Canada.
She holds Master’s degrees in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics and in Philosophy from Warsaw University, and a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University.