Darcy W.E. Allen

A cryptodemocracy is cryptographically-secured collective choice infrastructure on which individuals coordinate their voting property rights. Drawing on economic and political theory, a cryptodemocracy is a more fluid and emergent form of collective choice. This book examines these theoretical characteristics before exploring specific applications of a cryptodemocracy in labor bargaining and corporate governance. The analysis of the characteristics of a more emergent and contractual democratic process has implications for a wide range of collective choice.

This book investigates the theoretical and practical implications of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies for democratic decision making. What new structures of democracy does blockchain technology enable? A cryptodemocracy is cryptographically-secured collective choice infrastructure on which individuals coordinate their voting property rights. Drawing on economic and political theory, a cryptodemocracy is a more fluid and emergent form of collective choice. This book examines these theoretical characteristics before exploring specific applications of a cryptodemocracy in labor bargaining and corporate governance. The analysis of the characteristics of a more emergent and contractual democratic process has implications for a wide range of collective choice.

This Element develops a theory of institutional acceleration to explain the transformation to a digital economy through a cluster of frontier technologies: artificial intelligence, blockchain, quantum computing, cryptography, and low-earth orbit infrastructure. Unlike previous technological revolutions, these technologies transform not how we organise things, but how we coordinate economic activity. The authors' supertransition thesis explains why these digital technologies shouldn't be understood in isolation, but rather should be understood in how they combine to create new institutional possibilities, leading to more open, complex, and global economic systems. Drawing on evolutionary economics and institutional theory, this Element shows how this evolutionary process is reshaping our institutional economic architecture. Ultimately, institutional acceleration drives greater computation and knowledge into our economic systems.

This Element develops a theory of institutional acceleration to explain the transformation to a digital economy through a cluster of frontier technologies: artificial intelligence, blockchain, quantum computing, cryptography, and low-earth orbit infrastructure. Unlike previous technological revolutions, these technologies transform not how we organise things, but how we coordinate economic activity. The authors' supertransition thesis explains why these digital technologies shouldn't be understood in isolation, but rather should be understood in how they combine to create new institutional possibilities, leading to more open, complex, and global economic systems. Drawing on evolutionary economics and institutional theory, this Element shows how this evolutionary process is reshaping our institutional economic architecture. Ultimately, institutional acceleration drives greater computation and knowledge into our economic systems.

When Entrepreneurs Meet: The Collective Governance of New Ideas challenges our understanding of how entrepreneurs crystallize opportunities surrounding new technologies. While innovation is the fundamental driver of growth and prosperity, how the earliest stages of entrepreneurship are governed remains elusive. This book creates a new, institutional approach to understanding entrepreneurship before emphasizing how entrepreneurs create governance structures to coordinate new knowledge resources.Rather than the conventional view that entrepreneurship happens inside firms, this unique transaction-cost economics analysis of entrepreneurship suggests it might begin earlier in hybrid, polycentric self-governance structures, including the innovation commons. Allen explores and analyses various examples of these structures, including hackerspaces and the institutions coalescing around the development of the blockchain economy, along with the dynamics of how those institutions might collapse into firms. This new understanding of the entrepreneurial governance problem is also connected to contemporary questions about the purpose, scope, and application of innovation policy.