Institutional transformations in the digital society: from information asymmetry to digital currencies of central banks

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study of deep transformations of the institutional environment, unfolding during the digital transition and related to ideas about information asymmetry. The author shows the latter’s evolution and various features of its modern reformatting, whose cornerstone is the introduction of digital currencies of central banks. Information asymmetry is considered as the basic awareness of economic players in the context of the spatio-temporal conditions of existence as an integral state of the market communication process, which is connected with the very existence of human society and its creative activities and restructuring in the process of economic evolution based on professional knowledge. Information asymmetry is a risk distribution format adequate for a market society. At the same time, market stability under economic freedom requires information asymmetry and a decentralized information circulation system. The article shows that the global structuring of information on the basis of transparency criteria, which is characteristic of the digital transition, leads to the degradation of the basic historical foundations of the regulation of socio-economic interaction based on ideas about information asymmetry, trust, credibility and professionalism. At the same time, the structuring of the digital society in order to achieve information orderliness and the a priori reliability of the communication environment results in the denial of the institution of trust. The comprehensive fight against the "human factor" through increased supervision of the state and financial operators concentrates the risks of the economic system. The introduction of digital currencies of central banks becomes the final stage on the way to the creation of a fully transparent, and information-ordered economic environment, which is actually ambivalent and contradictory, as it reduces the economic competences of market subjects and delegates a significant part of market communications to digital algorithms, which leads to the emergence of societies with concentrated and undiversified risks.