Identification forms a key part of all but the least sophisticated economic and political transactions. More complex or significant transactions demand more formal identification of the parties involved. In this paper we develop an institutional as well as a public choice theory of identity. We...

Innovation policy is normally evaluated from the welfare perspective of market failure, and therefore focuses on social benefits. This paper adapts the Djankov et al. (2003) model of comparative social costs associated with any institution to analyse the specific institutions of innovation...

Distributed ledger technology, invented for cryptocurrencies, is increasingly understood as a new general-purpose technology for a broad range of economic activities that rely on consensus of a database of transactions or records. However, blockchains are more than just a disruptive new ICT....

This paper introduces the V-form organisation, a new form of firm organisation where vertical integration is outsourced to a decentralized distributed ledger (a blockchain). V-form organisations rely on the coordination of a (trusted) third party. It looks specifically at two instances of V-form...