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The purpose of this article is to clarify current and widespread misconceptions about the properties of blockchain technologies and to describe challenges and avenues for correct and trustworthy design and implementation of distributed ledger system (DLS) or Technology (DLT).

The authors contrast the properties of a blockchain with desired, however emergent, properties of a DLS, which is a complex and distributed system. They point out and justify, with facts and analysis, current misconceptions about the blockchain and DLSs. They describe challenges that these systems will need to address and possible solution avenues for achieving trustworthiness.

Many of the statements that have appeared on the internet, news and academic articles, such as immutable ledger and exact copies, may be misleading. These are desired emergent properties of a complex system, not assured properties. It is well-known within the distributed systems and critical software community that it is extremely hard to prove that a complex system correctly and completely implements emergent properties. Further research and development for trustworthy DLS design and implementation is needed, both practical and theoretical.

This is the first known published attempt at describing current misconceptions about blockchain technologies. Further collaborative work, discussions, potential solutions, evaluations, resulting publications and verified reference implementations are needed to ensure DLTs are safe, secure, and trustworthy.

Interdisciplinary teams with members from academia, business and industry, and from disciplines such as business, entrepreneurship, theoretical and practical computer science, cybersecurity, finance, mathematics and statistics, must be formed. Such teams must collaborate with the objective of developing strategies and techniques for ensuring the correctness and security of future DLSs in which our society may become dependent.

The value and originality of this article is twofold: the disproving, through fact collection and systematic analysis, of current misconceptions about the properties of the blockchain and DLSs, and the discussion of challenges to achieving adequate trustworthiness along with the proposal of general avenues for possible solutions.

This paper describes a small research project undertaken in a technical college in Qatar on the use of iPads in the classroom. iPads were trialed for a semester each in mathematics and physics classes; students completed pre- and post-surveys. Classroom observations were carried out and interviews were conducted with both faculty (N=3) and students (N=19). Over 80% of students reported positively on the iPad as being “helpful” to “very helpful” for learning new things and course materials, for increasing their interaction with online course materials and getting course information and for exploring additional material related to course topics. Faculty perceptions of iPad use in class were also positive.

This paper aims to solve a mining work centralization problem using a gamification-based approach.

The authors have developed a simple blockchain application that incorporates a gamification concept into the mining work. Then, they asked some participants in an experiment to use the application for a week and gathered some insights from the responses on questionnaires.

The results show that the gamification-based approach distributed mining work among many participants by increasing their motivation to participate mining work.

The gamification-based approach solves a mining work centralization problem and opens a new direction for future blockchain technologies.

Purpose: Cryptocurrency technology has improved fast in the social economy and growth. Because cryptocurrency has many good qualities, it is initially employed for Bitcoin transactions.

Methodology: With the advent of Bitcoin, the link between distributed ledger technology (DLT) and the banking market has become stronger and more integrated. As more banking institutions understood the relevance of DLT, they began experimenting with using it in financial activities, such as R3CEV, Hyperledger, and Qiwi.

Findings: Many commercial organisations are beginning to experiment with DLT to reduce transactional costs and boost operational effectiveness, particularly in financial notes, cross-border payments, and asset-backed financing.

Practical Implications: DLT has many potential applications in banking domains in the upcoming years.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

To introduce blockchain in simple terms for business lawyers to be able to spot the right issues and ask the right questions.

This article provides an overview of blockchain, identifies two example use cases, and highlights some of the most pressing legal issues, including issues to address in on-chain programming, off-chain agreements and other issues when determining whether to implement a blockchain solution.

This article concludes that there has been a significant growth in investment and interest in blockchain. Numerous companies across different sectors have developed blockchain proof-of-concepts, with some heading towards production deployments. At this point, commercial blockchain is largely in the pilot or proof-of-concept stage across a wide range of use cases, with payments and supply chain being two of the most promising use cases. This article also identifies possible legal issues associated with blockchain.

Despite the growing interest in blockchain, it is still a novel topic to many business lawyers. It is very important that lawyers are able to identify the right issues and ask the right questions.

Practical guidance from experienced lawyers in the Technology Transactions and Financial Services Regulatory & Enforcement practices.

To investigate the application of the social enterprise model to the childcare sector in Scotland and develop a practical model for analysing such social enterprises.

A review of the literature of ideas on social enterprise found in official and academic literature is presented. The concept of “social enterprise” is reviewed with particular reference to features of the childcare sector that relate both generally and specifically to Scotland. Reports the results of a questionnaire survey, conducted in late 2005 and early 2006, involving 81 childcare organizations (27.0 per cent response rate).

The results indicated that about two‐thirds of the organizations operated at just one site, with playgroups tending to be local groups operating in relatively small geographical areas. Reveals that the issue of whether childcare should be free caused mixed but fairly evenly distributed responses, from strong agreement to strong disagreement, but the issue of external sources of funding and the problems involved caused the majority of respondents to agree that childcare services are unsustainable without external funding, a finding that shows that sustainability is not the same as self‐sufficiency. Concludes that childcare sector issues and social economy issues are the most significant.

Contributes to the social enterprises literature where there is a dearth of knowledge about the birth and death rates for social enterprises and where improved statistics would help in supporting sector‐related policies more effectively and understanding better the sector’s function and behaviour. Provides information that could be helpful for banks and other financial institutions that might be in a position to offer credit to these social enterprises.

The purpose of this chapter is to report some initial findings based on the WTO Dispute Settlement Data Set (Ver. 2.0) that the authors have compiled for the World Bank. The data set contains approximately 28 000 observations on the workings of the Dispute Settlement system. It covers all 351 WTO disputes initiated through the official filing of a Request for Consultations from January 1, 1995, until October 25, 2006; and for these disputes it includes events occurring until December 31, 2006. Each dispute is followed through its legal life via the panel stage, the Appellate Body stage, to the implementation stage.

The descriptive statistics in the chapter points to three observations. The first and obvious observation is the almost complete absence of least developed countries. Second, less poor and developing countries are much more active and successful than the authors would have expected. Third, the EU and the United States dominate less than expected, being much more often the subject of complaints, than a complaining party, and they have a very low share of all panelists.

The purpose of this paper is to fill several knowledge gaps regarding the contents of collective agreements, using a new online database. The authors analyse 249 collective agreements from 11 countries – Benin, Brazil, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Peru, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda. The authors research to what extent wage and other remuneration-related clauses, working hours, paid leave arrangements and work-family arrangements are included in collective agreements and whether bargaining topics cluster within agreements.

The authors use the web-based WageIndicator Collective Bargaining Agreement Database with uniformly coded agreements, that are both collected and made accessible online. The authors present a quantitative multi-country comparison of the inclusion and contents of the clauses in the agreements.

The authors find that 98 per cent of the collective agreements include clauses on wages, but that only few agreements specify wage levels. Up to 71 per cent have clauses on social security, 89 per cent on working hours and 84 per cent of work-family arrangements. The authors also find that collective agreements including one of these four clauses, are also more likely to include the other three and conclude that no trade off exists between their inclusion on the bargaining agenda.

Being one of the first multi-country analyses of collective agreements, the analysis is primarily explorative, aiming to establish a factual baseline with regard to the contents of collective agreements.

This study is unique because of its focus on the content of collective bargaining agreements. The authors are the first to be able to show empirically which clauses are included in existing collective agreements in developing countries.