Prysm Group brings in award winning economists

Nobel Prize laureate Oliver Hart and former Microsoft Chief Economist Dr. Preston McAfee have been added to the senior advisory board of blockchain economics and governance design venture, Prysm Group.

Prof. Hart, currently the Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University, was awarded the 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on contract theory and his fundamental contributions to the theory of incomplete contracts.

Dr. McAfee served as the Chief Economist at Microsoft from 2014 until earlier this year, and previously led research teams at Google and at Yahoo!, where he was also Chief Economist from 2007 to 2012. He won the Golden Goose Award in 2014 for his research on auction design, and has dedicated much of his career to exploring the intersection of microeconomics and computer science.

Founders

Prysm Group is headed up by Dr. Cathy Barrera and Dr. Stephanie Hurder. Dr. Barrera is the lead contributor to the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab and the Cryptoeconomics Industry Expert for the recently launched MIT Sloan Executive Education ‘Blockchain Technologies: Business Innovation and Application’ course.

Dr. Hurder is a Harvard-educated economist specialising in human capital, market design, and the future of work. Prior to founding Prysm Group, she was at the Boston Consulting Group, where she worked with Fortune 50 corporations and global NGOs. She has also held research positions at MIT, Microsoft Research, and Merrill Lynch, and has led seminars to faculty at a half dozen top research universities across the United States.

“With the addition of two such distinguished economists to our advisory board, we will be able to bolster our unique position in the market as trailblazers of cryptoeconomics,” says Dr. Hurder. “When it comes to decentralised systems, value is created using incentives and market structures, as opposed to traditional management and organisational systems, and that is our key differentiator when helping blockchain organisations deliver favourable results. With Prof. Hart and Dr. McAfee onboard, Prysm Group gains the world’s leading experts in incentive and market design.”