Digital Currency and FinTech
Research on crypto markets, DeFi, smart contracts, and the financial microstructure of emerging digital systems.
Adrasteia Labs
Research on digital markets, mechanism design, and AI-native economic inquiry.
Founded by Heikichi Hayashi, Adrasteia Labs brings together collaborators in economics and computer science to study digital currency, FinTech, DeFi, market design, and empirical strategy for emerging economic systems.
The lab develops theory-informed empirical research, collaborative data workflows, and AI-assisted research infrastructure for questions at the frontier of finance, technology, and economic design.
06
core researchers and affiliates
07
papers across review, working, and in-progress stages
04
active lab initiatives in the pipeline
Research profile
Three areas shape the lab's portfolio.
Mechanism Design and Market Design
Fair and incentive-compatible allocation rules, strategic behavior, and algorithmic game theory in financial and digital markets.
AI for Economic Research
AI-driven workflows, empirical automation, and meta-economics approaches for faster and more transparent research production.
Mission
An interdisciplinary lab organized around finance, digital markets, and AI-assisted research.
Adrasteia Labs advances interdisciplinary research across digital finance, mechanism design, and computational approaches to economic inquiry.
Digital markets
The lab studies crypto markets, DeFi, smart contracts, insider trading, and broader strategic behavior in digital finance.
Mechanism design
Current work includes randomized mechanisms, incentive compatibility, and market design problems shaped by real digital and financial settings.
AI-native workflows
Adrasteia Labs also explores AI for economic research, combining empirical methods, automation, and collaborative workflows for faster research production.
Featured publications
Current papers move directly into the public research pipeline.
The homepage highlights papers currently under review, circulating working papers, and selected projects in development.
Working Paper
Heikichi Hayashi (2026). Working Paper.
A Blessing in Disguise? DeFi Exploits and Short-Horizon Responses in U.S. Commercial Paper Spreads
DeFi exploits generate short-run spillovers into traditional financial markets via money market fund reallocations, creating a measurable cross-market transmission channel.
Under Review
Heikichi Hayashi, Karl Yu, Huanxi Zhang, and Weiyu Qi (2025). Kilts Center at Chicago Booth Marketing Data Center Paper; NBER Working Paper forthcoming.
Smart Contracts, Dumb Money: Open Source Lemons
The project examines information quality, adverse selection, and investor behavior in open-source smart-contract environments and digital asset markets.
Advisor: Rahul Deb (Boston College and NBER)
Under Review
Heikichi Hayashi, Karl Yu, Huanxi Zhang, and Weiyu Qi (2025). Chicago Booth Microeconomics Working Paper; revisions requested by the editor at Theoretical Economics.
Smoothing the Cliff: Fair and Incentive-Compatible Priority Allocation via Randomized Mechanisms
This paper studies randomized allocation mechanisms designed to smooth cliff effects while preserving fairness and incentive compatibility in priority-based environments.
Active projects
Projects reflect the lab's actual research themes.
Together they span digital finance, market design, empirical analysis, and AI-centered research infrastructure.
Active
Algorithmic Deterrence and Insider Trading
An active project studying algorithmic deterrence, private enforcement, and the shadow tax imposed on strategic insider trading behavior.
Team: Heikichi Hayashi, Karl Yu, Ruoran Lai, Weiyu Qi
Active
DeFi Exploits and Commercial Paper Spreads
A single-authored research program on the short-horizon transmission of DeFi exploits into U.S. commercial paper spreads and adjacent financial indicators.
Team: Heikichi Hayashi
Active
Strategic Behavior and Mechanism Design in Financial and Digital Markets
A collaborative research stream on strategic behavior, mechanism design, and randomized allocation in financial and digital market environments.
Team: Heikichi Hayashi, Karl Yu, Huanxi Zhang, Weiyu Qi, Ruoran Lai
People
The lab brings together collaborators across economics, computer science, and finance.
Team profiles present current affiliations, research interests, and direct contact details for core members and collaborators.
Heikichi Hayashi
Founding Director
Adrasteia Labs; Central University of Finance and Economics; Research Assistant at The University of Hong Kong
Founder of Adrasteia Labs. Heikichi Hayashi works on digital currency, FinTech and DeFi, AI for economic research, causal inference in RCT design, game theory, and mechanism design.
Weiyu Qi
Core Member
University of Chicago, Computer Science
Core member contributing computer science expertise to interdisciplinary work on digital markets, algorithmic behavior, and AI-enabled research workflows.
Karl Yu
Core Member
Boston College, Economics
Core member contributing to research in economics, market design, digital finance, and collaborative paper development across the lab.
Contact
Connect with Adrasteia Labs.
For research inquiries, collaborations, workshop invitations, or academic correspondence, please contact the lab directly.