1. Private Benefits in Public Offerings: Tax Receivable Agreements in IPOs by Gladriel Shobe (Brigham Young University – J. Reuben Clark Law School)

2. Supercharged IPOs and the Up-C by Gladriel Shobe (Brigham Young University – J. Reuben Clark Law School)

3. Ending the Local Tax Deduction by Gladriel Shobe (Brigham Young University – J. Reuben Clark Law School)

4. Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications by Marc Pilkington (Université Bourgogne Franche Comté)

Blockchain technology became the buzzword and the darling of the media in late 2015. Earlier on that year, fortunately enough, following the diffusion on SSRN of an earlier paper devoted to Bitcoin, I was invited by two colleagues from Montreal to contribute an edited book titled Research Handbook on Digital Transformations published by Edward Elgar the following year. This favourable  mediatic context was probably not alien to the ensuing success of my working paper Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications (on average 20 downloads a day on SSRN since the beginning of 2016), which is a pre-publication version of the abovementioned book chapter. Above all, I owe this success to SSRN itself, a fantastic platform for researchers and academics worldwide that enables the dissemination of their works and constructive feedback thereon, thereby paving the way for intellectual stimulation, academic emulation, and eventually further improvements of their research. What makes a paper successful on SSRN? This is an interesting question. I think that it is a combination of research skills, intellectual rigour, and in my case, of societal context (i.e what are the big questions being asked to mankind at the time of writing).
The same way, SSRN is a powerful borderless Internet-based instrument, the same can be said to a certain extent of blockchain technology (one that was originally detached from nation states like its first application ever, namely Bitcoin). The drafting of this paper once obeyed a similar logic. I identified the bullet points of my reflection, and started drafting the structure in Macedonia in May 2015 on the occasion of a memorable conference. I pursued my efforts during the summer in Burgundy, France, my home country, and finally I finalized the paper in the Republic of Moldova in early 2016 where I was undergoing various research and entrepreneurial activities. I think that behind every research paper, there is also a personal story, one that might not be apparent to readers, and probably should not be in the interest of rigour and objectivity. Yet, this little anecdote shows that if one wants to publish a paper on SSRN, geography matters little. What does matter, however, is one’s appetite for the enhancement and the diffusion of knowledge. One can do that very easily today with a simple click on SSRN, and that’s what makes the present era truly exciting. Long life to SSRN… – Marc Pilkington

5. Disaggregating the State and Local Tax Deduction by Gladriel Shobe (Brigham Young University – J. Reuben Clark Law School)