Faculty Directory | Hanna Halaburda

Hanna Halaburda studies how new digital technologies reshape economic power. Her research examines whether changes in technological infrastructure lead markets to concentrate or decentralize—and which design choices determine those outcomes.

Her work spans platforms, blockchain systems, and emerging AI ecosystems. Using tools from industrial organization, game theory, and market design, she analyzes tipping, concentration, coordination failure, re-centralization, and adoption dynamics in digital markets. Rather than advocating for or against particular technologies, her focus is on economic structure: identifying the incentive mechanisms that shape how digital systems evolve, how tradeoffs in these systems emerge, and who ultimately controls them.

Professor Halaburda is an Associate Professor at NYU Stern School of Business and Co-Director of the NYU Blockchain Lab. Her research has been published in journals including Management Science, RAND Journal of Economics, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, and Journal of Economic Literature. She is co-author of Beyond Bitcoin: The Economics of Digital Currencies and Blockchain Technologies (2nd ed., 2022).