David Leblang | The Political Economy of Crypto-Currency Usage
Eggers Hall, 341
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Abstract: What can cryptocurrency markets tell us about government failure? When states inflate away savings or freeze the accounts of political opponents, citizens respond — and the instruments and channels they choose reveal exactly which failure they are solving. Using novel transaction data covering 120 economies, we show that democratic accountability is the central organizing variable: it determines whether citizens hold dollar-pegged stablecoins or censorship-resistant Bitcoin, and whether they transact through state-visible exchanges or platforms that hide their identity from authorities. In autocracies, citizens do both simultaneously — wanting the dollar, but not wanting the state to know they have it.
Co-author Ghita Chraibi, University of Virginia (usx8ns@virginia.edu)
David Leblang is the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Endowed Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is the Randolph Compton Professor of Public Affairs at the University’s Miller Center of Public Affairs where he is also director of policy studies.
Leblang is a scholar of political economy with research interests in global migration and in the politics of financial markets. His recent publications include “A Deportation Boomerang? Evidence from US Removals to Latin America and the Caribbean (Demography, 2025), The Ties That Bind: Immigration and the Global Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2023), “Labor Market Policy as Immigration Control: the Case of Temporary Protected Status“ (International Studies Quarterly, 2022), and “Framing Unpopular Foreign Policies” (American Journal of Political Science, 2022).
In 2015, Leblang was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Mentoring Award by the University of Virginia and in 2016 he received the Outstanding Mentoring Award from the Society of Women in International Political Economy of the International Studies Association.
Category
Social Science and Public Policy
Type
Talks
Region
In-Person
Open to
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Organizer
Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
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