A transaction cost perspective on blockchain governance in global value chains

This study advances theoretical insights into blockchain adoption in the context of global value chains from a transaction cost theory perspective. The research has adopted an exploratory qualitative approach using the Netnography method to scrutinize the case of TradeLens—a thriving blockchain-enabled ecosystem that Maersk and IBM jointly developed. This study applies textual and audiovisual data from company websites and social media. Our findings indicate blockchain technology's salient and strategic relevance in streamlining business processes, improving efficiency, enhancing visibility, transparency, and traceability for value creation in the global value chains. This investigation supports the notion that blockchain, as a disruptor, will transform global trade with the digital tools to share real-time information and collaborate security to reduce search and information cost, policing and enforcement cost in global economic transactions and administrative friction in trade. In contrast, the bargaining cost will increase if the information for the transaction is hard to verify where human actor intervention will be required, implying relatively higher designing costs in codifying the agreements in smart contracts

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Blockchain Technology - China\u27s Bid to High Long-Run Growth

Despite having the second largest economy at $13 trillion, China has only recently surpassed the World Bank’s definition of the ‘middle-income range’ which is a gross national income per capita between$1,000 to $12,000 (constant 2011 international$). This is a noteworthy accomplishment since many other developing nations have fallen victim to economic stagnation within this range leading to the term “middle-income trap”. This paper will argue that one of the ways in which China escaped the middle-income trap and will continue to grow its economic influence is through the support of blockchain technology. Research and development, early technological adoption and business climate all play a role in explaining how the Chinese public and private sector have used blockchain technology to encourage economic growth. While there are many questions and misconceptions about blockchain technology and its place in China, this paper seeks only to answer a select few

Multilateral Transparency for Security Markets Through DLT

For decades, changing technology and policy choices have worked to fragment securities markets, rendering them so dark that neither ownership nor real-time price of securities are generally visible to all parties multilaterally. The policies in the U.S. National Market System and the EU Market in Financial Instruments Directive— together with universal adoption of the indirect holding system— have pushed Western securities markets into a corner from which escape to full transparency has seemed either impossible or prohibitively expensive. Although the reader has a right to skepticism given the exaggerated promises surrounding blockchain in recent years, we demonstrate in this paper that distributed ledger technology (DLT) contains the potential to convert fragmented securities markets back to multilateral transparency. Leading markets generally lack transparency in two ways that derive from their basic structure: (1) multiple platforms on which trades in the same security are matched have separate bid/ask queues and are not consolidated in real time (fragmented pricing), and (2) highspeed transfers of securities are enabled by placing ownership of the securities in financial institutions, thus preventing transparent ownership (depository or street name ownership). The distributed nature of DLT allows multiple copies of the same pricing queue to be held simultaneously by a large number of order-matching platforms, curing the problem of fragmented pricing. This same distributed nature of DLT would allow the issuers of securities to be nodes in a DLT network, returning control over securities ownership and transfer to those issuers and thus, restoring transparent ownership through direct holding with the issuer. A serious objection to DLT is that its latency is very high—with each Bitcoin blockchain transaction taking up to ten minutes. To remedy this, we first propose a private network without cumbersome proof-of-work cryptography. Second, we introduce into our model the quickly evolving technology of “lightning networks,” which are advanced two-layer off-chain networks conducting high-speed transacting with only periodic memorialization in the permanent DLT network. Against the background of existing securities trading and settlement, this Article demonstrates that a DLT network could bring multilateral transparency and thus represent the next step in evolution for markets in their current configuration

Blockchain technology into the logistics supply chain implementation effectiveness

Technologies currently have a tremendous impact on all spheres of economy, business and a state. They integrally change people’s conception of trade, property, and market entities interaction. Artificial intelligence, additive, informationommunication, green technologies, biotechnologies, and blockchain technologies development and implementation confirm their leadership importance and inevitability in relation to the activities traditional approaches. In the modern world only the companies with flexible vision, equipment and technologies able to instantly reform, adapt to new conditions and challenges, will benefit. The point at issue is Industry 4.0 as a new technological mode emergence