About

Hanna Halaburda is an Associate Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics at NYU Stern School of Business, having joined the institution in September 2019. Her research focuses on how technology influences economic forces, business models, and marketplace interactions. A significant strand of her work examines competition between digital platforms, with a particular emphasis on digital currencies and blockchain technologies since 2011. Her research includes analyses of incentives in consensus protocols, cryptocurrency adoption, smart contracts, and token issuance. Professor Halaburda has published her work in reputable academic journals such as Management Science, RAND, American Economic Journal, and Games and Economic Behavior. She co-authored the book 'Beyond Bitcoin: The Economics of Digital Currency,' which was first published in 2015 and has a second edition released in 2022. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University, Master's degrees in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics, and in Philosophy from Warsaw University. Prior to her current role, she was an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and a senior economist at the Bank of Canada.

Selected publications

• Platform Building With Fake Consumers: On Double Dippers and Airdrop Farmers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Decentralization and the Law of the Jungle: An Empirical Investigation of Ethereum's Market Mechanism 

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Can DAOs Deliver Truly Decentralized Governance?

  2025-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Promises and Perils of Decentralization in the Blockchain Age

  Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2025-12-14

  article

  Blockchain technology promises to disrupt information-based markets through decentralized governance, challenging the dominance of centralized digital platforms. Information Systems (IS) scholars have examined blockchain’s key affordances – distributed value capture, transparency, smart contracts, and token-driven growth – across diverse domains such as supply chains, social media, and digital identity. Yet, empirical evidence reveals persistent centralization in practice, raising concerns about the viability and desirability of blockchain-enabled decentralization. Challenges include governance token concentration, centralized system layers, and trade-offs in the “blockchain trilemma” of scalability, security, and decentralization. Building on the evidence, this panel aims to foster critical discussion around the feasibility, relevance, and research implications of blockchain decentralization.

  Publisher

• On the Impossibility of Transparent and Decentralized DeFi Trading Preliminary -Comments Welcome

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Bitcoin Arbitrage: The Role of a Single Exchange

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• “Zero Cost” Majority Attacks on Permissionless Proof of Work Blockchains

  Management Science · 2024-01-23 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  The core premise of permissionless blockchains is their reliable and secure operation without the need to trust any individual agent. At the heart of blockchain consensus mechanisms is an explicit cost (e.g., mining cost) for participation in the network and the opportunity to add blocks to the blockchain. A key rationale for that cost is to make attacks on the network, which could be theoretically carried out if a majority of nodes were controlled by a single entity, too expensive to be worthwhile. We demonstrate that a majority attacker can successfully attack with a negative net cost when accounting for the mining rewards the attacker collects during the attack. This shows that the protocol mechanisms are insufficient to create a secure network, emphasizing the importance of socially driven mechanisms external to the protocol. At the same time, negative cost enables a new type of majority attack that is more likely to elude external scrutiny. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, finance.

  PublisherDOI

• Humans and Algorithms in Organizations: Navigating the Intersection of Blockchain and AI

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  This symposium delves into the integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) within organizational design and theory, focusing on their impact on decentralized decision-making and governance. It navigates a series of theoretical lenses to dissect this integration. First, it employs bounded rationality to understand the delegation of complex tasks to AI, in the context of human cognitive limitations. Next, transaction costs are used to evaluate the governance implications of blockchain-enabled smart contracts. The role of AI in reshaping organizational structures is also a focal point, particularly through the lens of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Additionally, the symposium probes into the effects of AI on network effects within digital platforms. Concluding the theoretical exploration, it considers the interplay between machine learning and human judgment for theorizing in organizational research. This comprehensive inquiry aims to advance our understanding of how emerging technologies like blockchain and AI are reshaping the landscape of organizational design and decision-making processes.

  PublisherDOI

• Digitization of Transaction Terms within TCE: Strong Smart Contract as a New Mode of Transaction Governance

  MIS Quarterly · 2024-06-01 · 28 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We use transaction cost economics (TCE) to define the “digitization of transaction terms” shift parameter that describes the institutional changes associated with increased digitization in society. We then draw on legal scholarship to analyze how strong smart contracts, which refer to agreements with automatic execution and enforcement that are not reversible by courts, rely on a new level of digitization of transaction terms. Specifically, these contracts may rely on standard digital infrastructures such as blockchain systems that guarantee automatic execution and non-reversibility. Strong smart contracts represent a distinct mode of transaction governance compared to markets, hierarchies, or hybrids. This is because each classic governance mode is distinguished by how ex post adaptation is handled—through public courts, managerial fiat, or both. In contrast, strong smart contracts prevent ex post adaptation altogether. We propose that when strong smart contracts can be fully specified, they may dominate other governance modes based on certain trade-offs. These trade-offs include weighing the benefits of avoiding the holdup problem and lowering contract enforcement costs against the downsides of high ex ante specification costs and the elimination of flexibility to make ex post adjustments in a changing environment. Our discussion elaborates on which institutional conditions can further facilitate this institutional shift.

  PublisherDOI

• The business revolution: Economy‐wide impacts of artificial intelligence and digital platforms

  Journal of Economics & Management Strategy · 2024-02-20 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Abstract In this essay, we identify several themes of the digital business transformation, with a particular focus on the economy‐wide impacts of artificial intelligence and digital platforms. In doing so, we highlight specific industries, beyond just the high‐profile “Big Tech” firms, where the digital business revolution is having, or promises to have, significant impact. The papers in this special issue (flagged with bold font below) provide a deeper analysis of the themes and applications we touch on here.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI