Ethical Economy

Economic models affect our individual and social behaviour. Previous models work to incentivise secrecy and competition. Are we able to devise an economic model that incentivises sharing transparency and honesty?A key tenant of Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) is that transactions that perform better than others are the ones with a lower risk of opportunism. In this thesis we examine commons-based peer production or Peer-to-Peer as a new transactional setting that might have a lower risk of opportunistic behaviour. Our literature scans the occurrence of opportunism and the tools used to minimise it within market transactions. We go beyond market transactions and examine the new phenomenon of commons-based peer production as a new transactional setting with different modular and granular settings.These settings create a different governance dynamic within firms and institutions. We explore how this new dynamic positively influences horizontal and vertical transparency which produces a more open collaborative model with the potential of reducing opportunism.