This thesis explored, in two parts, the macroeconomic impacts of exchange rate regimes (ERR), as well as the recent developments in fiscal policy and fiscal decentralization. Part I has reconsidered the role of ERR and its interplay with fiscal, monetary and tax policy. The first result that emerges (Chapter 1) is that fixed ERR can serve as a credible policy tool for stabilizing fiscal policy. However, this stabilizing effect is conditional upon the inter-temporal distribution of the costs of loose fiscal policy. In assessing the linkage between ERR and crises (banking/financial, currency and debt), Chapter 2 evidenced that the bipolar view is no longer valid, and that, crisis proneness rather depends on the macroeconomic fundamentals (the volatility of private sector credit, the deficit-financing mechanism, and the debt-to-GDP ratio). In Chapter 3, we unveiled a strong relationship between ERR and tax policy. Countries with pegged regimes have greater reliance on domestic taxation -such as the VAT- to make up for the loss of seigniorage revenue (substitution effect). Moreover, peggers tend to collect more VAT revenue to offset the shortfall in cross border taxes following the trade liberalization reform (competitiveness effect). Part II discussed the cyclical response of fiscal policy in high debt periods, and focused on fiscal decentralization issues. In Chapter 4, we showed that the reaction of fiscal policy to the business cycle is non-linear and conditional to the level of public debt. When the debt-to-GDP ratio goes beyond a certain threshold (87%), fiscal policy loses its counter-cyclical properties. Further, we highlighted that carefully-designed fiscal rules help maintaining counter-cyclicality through an ex ante disciplinary effect. Chapters 5 and 6 analyzed the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of public service delivery and fiscal policy performance, respectively. Chapter 5 revealed that a sufficient level of expenditure decentralization, coupled with revenue decentralization, improves the efficiency of public service delivery. However, the political and institutional environment is critical for reaping decentralization-led benefits. Lastly, Chapter 6 concluded that fiscal decentralization has destabilizing effect by reducing the counter-cyclicality of fiscal policy. In addition, we found that decentralization strengthens the structural fiscal balance; however, vertical fiscal imbalances reduce the benefits of decentralization. It is therefore critical to limit asymmetries between expenditure and revenue decentralization, so as to reduce the transfer-dependency of local governments to the central level, and thus prevent decentralization from weakening the fiscal stance at the general government level.
This paper considers an overlapping-generations model with pay-as-you-go social security and retirement decision making by an old agent. In addition, the paper assumes that labor productivity depreciates. Under this setting, socially optimal allocations are examined. The first-best allocation is an \nallocation that maximizes welfare when a social planner \ndistributes resources and forces an old agent to work and \nretire as she wants. The second-best allocation is an allocation that maximizes welfare when she can use only pay-as-you-go social security in a decentralized economy. The paper finds a range of an old agent’s labor productivity such \nthat the first-best allocation is achieved in the decentralized economy. This differs from the finding in Micheland Pestieau [“Social security and early retirement in an overlapping-generations growth model”, Annals of Economics & Finance, 2013] that the first-best allocation cannot be achieved in the decentralized economy.
The present theme is conditioned by the directions of public finance reform in Moldova. The aim of the research is focused on assessing the fiscal decentralization in the Republic of Moldova, aimed at: analyzing financial decentralization conceptual approaches and examining amendments to the administrative and legislative level to strengthen the level of fiscal decentralization in the country. Research methodology is based on processes and of legislative analysis, as well as on literature. As a result, it appears that in Moldova was first adopted a policy document that clearly dimensioned an action plan to achieve a qualitative decentralization in all areas and village structures. Therefore, the author conducted a comprehensive analysis of the process of reforming the central and local public administration in Moldova, presenting argumentative scientific conclusions and formulating own recommendations which would contribute to the continuity of the reform and strengthening budgetary fiscal capacity.
The emergence of Bitcoin as a means to make electronic transactions directly across a peer-to-peer network has sparked interest from many fields, mostly due to its capability to handle such transactions on a large scale, with no recourse to centralised structures of management. This is achieved through its underlying technical architecture, the ‘block chain’: an impressively robust system of recording transactions on a network that’s security is guaranteed via the distribution of all transaction data (in blocks) to every node in the system on an ever-increasing chain. Last year saw the emergence of ‘Bitcoin 2.0’ applications, where vast amounts of investment capital flowed into projects that proposed to develop systems that offer a diverse range of applications beyond crypto-currencies, such as voting systems, electronic contracts, financial services, and identification recognition. What unifies these projects is the desire to replace centralised, human-run organisations, with cryptographically secure, automated peer-to-peer systems. Within this desire is a political vision, a vision that is not at all homogenous, nor harmonious, but nonetheless contains central elements that can be traced in the formation of Bitcoin. This paper seeks to explore this vision, drawing on primary research data to examine the technical politics of crypto-currencies. Bitcoin first appeared as a white paper published on The Cryptography Mailing List at metzdowd.com, an open mailing list associated with the internet subculture of cypherpunks – a subculture that fused concerns over increasing state intrusion into everyday life through rapidly growing electronic surveillance, with the open source principles that challenge proprietary software, declare digital technology to be a public good, and thus endeavour to provide alternatives. These values are indeed reflected in Bitcoin’s white paper, and through its public release as an open source project. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and ongoing revelations about coordinated programs of mass state surveillance, many have begun to see Bitcoin as a potentially important public tool. But how exactly, can radical values be embedded in technology? And how does its diffusion among different contexts, and development for different purposes, affect this radical potential? In these respects, I believe it is important to consider the work of Andrew Feenberg. At the crux of Feenberg’s critical theory is the concept of hegemonic technological rationality which, through a dominant form of reasoning, enframes how we understand technology; and through dominant systems of production, entails the exclusion of the interests of marginal social groups. This has the effect of reproducing dominant hegemonic social values through the practices that consequently prosper in this system, practices that structure much of social life and impinge on environments. Feenberg does however, identify two means for subverting this process: democratic intervention on the part of social groups campaigning for alternative technologies; and tactical practices in which marginal groups can reveal alternative potentialities for technology by finding new ways of appropriating the technologies around them. In the collective and voluntary efforts of disparate developers unified by the conviction that digital technologies are and should be a public good – and not proprietary tools of corporate profiteering and state surveillance – we see this latter form of tactical resistance embodied in the origins of Bitcoin. Bitcoin thus opens up alternative possibilities for technological progress, both in ideological and material ways. Materially, Bitcoin opens up further potentialities for tactical practices, as we are seeing with the various ways in which block chain technology is being adapted. Ideologically, Bitcoin introduces its users to systems of thought that challenge dominant understandings of financial technologies and the social structures they support. In this latter sense, Bitcoin has the potential to be a counter-hegemonic force. In this paper however, I will present data that suggests this is not the case, and that in fact Bitcoin is reinforcing the dominant ideals of neoliberalism. In presenting the details of this process, I aim to demonstrate the importance of understanding the development of ‘cultures of knowledge’ that emerge around contemporary technological practices. References and Notes Feenberg, A. (1991) A Critical Theory of Technology . Oxford: University Press Feenberg, A. (1999) Questioning Technology. London: Routledge
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/rdc.2015.16954 Trabalho enviado em 27 de junho de 2015. Aceito em 29 de junho de 2015. Resumo O Brasil está organizado como uma federação trina desde que, em 1988, os municípios tornaram-se entes federativos. O fortalecimento institucional do Município incluiu a responsabilidade pela execução das políticas sociais, que eles são obrigados a co-financiar. Ao longo do tempo, a maior gama de responsabilidades administrativas e financeiras tem indicado os limites da descentralização das políticas públicas já que a maior parte dos municípios não tem condições de atender às expectativas criadas com o seu papel na estrutura federativa. Trata-se de um problema derivado do federalismo simétrico no Brasil, que trata igualmente todos os municípios, sem distingui-los por porte demográfico ou função na rede urbana. Esse é o contexto em que se estabelece a disputa federativa pela crescente receita que as empresas pagam ao poder público pela extração de petróleo. Tal receita deixa de ser percebida como compensação pelos impactos ambientais e sociais causados pela atividade extrativa e torna-se mais uma transferência intergovernamental aos entes federativos. Tal situação tende a torna-los todos mais dependentes desta fonte de receita e, assim, mais sensíveis aos interesses da economia do petróleo, o que diminui o ímpeto governamental na defesa da política de substituição de energia fóssil por renováveis. Palavras chave: petróleo, energias renováveis, disputa, federação. Abstract Brazil is organized as a federation in three levels including the federal union, states and municipalities since 1988 when municipalities have become federal entities. The institutional strengthening of the municipality included the responsibility for the implementation of social policies which they are required to co-finance. Over time, the larger range of administrative and financial responsibilities has indicated the limits of decentralization of public policies since most municipalities cannot afford to meet the expectations created by its role in the federal structure. It is a problem of the symmetric federalism in Brazil, which treats all municipalities without distinguishing them by population size or function in the urban network. This is the context of the dispute by the increasing federal revenues that companies pay to the government from oil. This income is no longer seen as a compensation for environmental and social impacts caused by extractive activity and becomes an intergovernmental transfer to states and municipalities. This situation tends to make them all more dependent on this source of revenue and thus more vulnerable to the interests of the oil economy, which reduces the government interests to defend the replacement policy of fossil energy by renewable. Keywords: oil, renewable energy, dispute federation
Actuality and purpose of work. Bitcoin is a currency that exists only virtually and has appeared due to the global financial crisis and development of technologiesof technologies. Cashless payments become more popular and in this context e-commerce has improved. There were Aanalized the ysis of bitcoin perspectives in the banking system, by emphasizing analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this currency and the point of view of investors, central banks and commercial banks. The methods used. The methodological approaches used bymentioned in special literature were used. The results of the work. Analysis can be used to improve electronic commerce and cashless payments in Moldova, where cash is still very widely used.
Introduction For this paper Mobile Geolocation will be used to describe the determination of the spatial location of a personal mobile communications device from the signals it emits. The signals may be analyzed either in the device or in other locations. The phrase ”location based services” is often used to describe the processes used for geolocation. Geolocation may involve both retrieving identification and locational data generated by the mobile device, or interpretation of the signal in relation to receiving stations. Mobile Geolocation has its roots in the work of Robert Watson-Watt and High Frequency Direction Finding. HF/DF was developed originally in the 1920s to track lightning and later adapted to track German submarines and aircraft transmissions by virtually instantaneous triangulation using a small antenna and sophisticated electronics. However such technology did not automatically give the identity of the source. GPS systems developed in the 1980s allowed the receiver to calculate its position by analysis of transmissions from special satellites. However GPs receivers did not routinely broadcast their location. Cellular telephones developed in the 19990s to create portable communication devices. These devices “identified themselves” to the cellular towers at all times when they were on so they could receive communications. By the year 2000 WIFI technologies were spreading throughout the world. WIFI technologies gave the increasingly smaller mobile computers massive increases in internet connectivity. Since 2000 the changes have largely been in improved higher speed, smaller more capable mobile devices and greater penetration in the marketplace. However the key change has been the integration of technologies. Phones, computers GPS’s and cameras are now in a hand held package. A mobile phone is now a camera, when it takes a picture its GPS data may be engrafted to the picture. Signal routing from a WIFI system can routinely include the location of the WIFI hotspot. Telephones can be located at any time and linked to the WIFI internet activity. The capability of processing these signals has also exploded. (1) The consumer is essentially faced with a stark choice. Disconnect from the entire connected world, or expose precise geolocation information to a vast number of potentially hostile parties. Many different kinds of parties want access to the geolocation information. Rental car companies can track their fleets, police officers can track suspects, parents can track children, spouses can track one another. stores can track customers and security services can track dissidents. Courts are increasingly asked to resolve very complex issues involving these technologies. Different legal systems and different legal traditions approach the problem in very different ways. The technology may be worldwide but the legal controls are supposedly local. The problem of course is that as long as communication networks are international there may be little or nothing even a national government can do. Unless, like the individual it cuts itself off from the global community. This paper cannot and does not present any “solution” to these problems. What it suggests is an analytical framework suitable to the problem. The framework is called a Technico-legal revolution.(2) A technico-legal revolution occurs when a given technological advance cannot be clearly analogized to existing legal structures. A technico-legal revolution consists of a series of stages in the legal response to the novel developments in technology.(3) The purpose of this paper is to briefly describe the theory of a technico-legal revolution, point out past examples of such revolutions, and then apply the theory to the developments in Mobile Geolocation. Understanding the development of legal analytical principles applicable to Mobile geolocation is an example of the legal system's process of adapting to technological change. TLR analysis allows researchers to anticipate and discount the spurious legal arguments inevitably made each time a new technology is developed. The framework suggests that each technico-legal revolution passes through four distinct phases. Although there is no fixed time period for each phase, a fixed order is identifiable. These phases are: (1) Autonomy, (2) Conflict, (3) Determination, and (4) Resolution. The four phases describe the actions of the parties, and provide a coherent structure for analysis of the problem. In the Autonomy phase, the developers of the technology act without any significant constraints imposed by the legal system, which is essentially reactive and often requires a triggering event before it becomes involved. The second phase is the Conflict phase. Conflict may come from any of a number of sources, including a sudden disaster, a scientific study, or a marketing plan or political action. In the Conflict phase, the developers of the technology are challenged by at least one other interest group, such as competitors, consumers, government, or labor. The conflicting groups stake out claims as to which prior legal analogy is most “relevant” i.e. most favorable to their requirements, and the irreconcilability of the conflict under standard legal analysis is the hallmark of the technico-legal revolution. The third phase is Determination. In this phase, the parties muster the factual support for their predetermined positions. Technico-legal revolutions are extraordinarily fact-sensitive. The assignment of the technico-legal revolution to a particular legal regime depends largely on which set of facts is accepted by the legal system. Typically, the parties know in the Conflict phase which type of facts will support their position. AQs a result political pressure is often used to determine which sets of facts will be researched. Studies which might product unfavorable results will not normally be supported by the party opposed to that position. Depending on the positions taken in the Autonomy and Conflict phases, the parties will want either prompt or extended analysis during the Determination phase. In the determination phase parties routinely “appropriate” phraseology in an attempt to alter the debate landscape prior to resolution. Terms such as “dna fingerprinting” “software piracy” ”signal stealing” “Privatsphere” and even ordinary words like “accident” are created or repurposed to push the legal debate in one direction or another. The goal is to move the debate into a more favorable domain. The key argument used by all parties in the Conflict and Determination phases is the false analogy. Since technico-legal revolutions are defined as situations in which no exact analogy to a preexisting legal regime is possible, the false analogy involves comparing some of the attributes of a new technology to those of a preexisting technology with a legal structure favorable to that party, while ignoring those which would lead to a different conclusion. The analogies are false in the sense that they are not exact as well as in the sense that the divergence from the prior situation is often overlooked or minimized. The fourth phase is Resolution. In this phase the legal system assigns the technology to a legal structure. One of the most important effects of the Resolution phase is the assignment of the burden of proof concerning unknown events. The fact that this burden is assigned after the factual material has been developed is one of the most striking characteristics of a technico-legal revolution. Historical examples of technico legal revolutions include the ability of aircraft to fly over private land without paying, the role of Submarines and Radio in maritime Warfare, the interception of telegraphic and telephonic communications and the development of the concept of informational privacy Early USA cases on Geolocation show a disturbing inability to comprehend just how complex the problem really is and indicate that we are heading towards a fragmented world order of expectations related to the law and Geolocation. There are currently statutory and regulatory proposals in both Europe and the USA. Acknowledgments Dr. Bernd Beier (Germany) is my longtime research colleague in this area and his comparative law insights have been critical. References and Notes Us Government Accountability organization Mobile Device Location Data:Additional Federal Actions Could Help Protect Consumer Privacy GAO-12-903: Published: Sep 11, 2012. Publicly Released: Oct 11, 2012. .Brannigan V and Beier B Standards for Privacy in Medical Information Systems: A Technico-Legal Revolution Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care. 1990 Nov 7 : 266–270. Brannigan, Vincent M. (1988) "Biotechnology: A First Order Technico-Legal Revolution," Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 16: pp. 154-196.
Gurchetan S. Grewal, Mark Ryan, Liqun Chen, Michael R. Clarkson
Du-Vote is a new remote electronic voting protocol that eliminates the often-required assumption that voters trust general-purpose computers. Trust is distributed in Du-Vote between a simple hardware token issued to the voter, the voter's computer, and a server run by election authorities. Verifiability is guaranteed with high probability even if all these machines are controlled by the adversary, and privacy is guaranteed as long as at least either the voter's computer, or the server and the hardware token, are not controlled by the adversary. The design of the Du-Vote protocol is presented in this paper. A new non-interactive zero-knowledge proof is employed to verify the server's computations. Du-Vote is a step towards tackling the problem of internet voting on user machines that are likely to have malware. We anticipate that the methods of Du-Vote can be used in other applications to find ways of achieving malware tolerance, that is, ways of securely using platforms that are known or suspected to have malware.
The current decentralization process escalating in Brazil since 1980 flanked by the endeavor of the democratization in the country, strengthened the role of the municipality once it was elevated to the status of autonomous federal entity by the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988. Upon 25 years of the given new democratic legacy, the municipal revenues increased in volume, in comparison to other spheres, due to the establishment of law and regulations accrediting new responsibilities and new obligations for the municipality. Although it was transformed into politics generator-making agent with potential to promote the local development, by means of power entitlement to be effective as well as the decision towards the design of such politics, the municipality has restricted autonomy towards political decision-making: most part of the resources tend to be transferred to a pre-defined destination via legislation or in the several programs set by the central government. Thus, public expenditures are increasingly as much as to be defined by federal rules as well as financial releases by conditional transfers to sectorial funds, restricted, in practice, to the autonomy of the local expenses. Henceforth, this essay is focused on the contribution to the debate about the possibility of municipal administrations to perform fundamental role of promotions of local development, with greater citizen participation and reduction of social inequalities of which surrounds Brazil, by highlighting elements for the proper analysis of the decentralization process towards the impact of public finance and municipal autonomy.
Currently the preparation of the new 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework period is taking place in all areas - e.g. the sectorial legislation, such as the establishment of the new system of Cohesion Policy, is in progress. The rules are being formed in the spirit of a new approach; result orientation will become the main goal which requires a change of attitude in the operation of the institution system. Poland and Hungary are two cohesion countries, both of them using a significant amount of structural funds to finance public investments. Despite the common regulation at EU level the two countries are seemingly choosing different solutions in order to guarantee smoother implementation that will allow policy objectives and results to be achieved more effectively – Hungary is centralizing and Poland is rather decentralizing the system. What is behind this phenomenon? Which is the best way to strengthen the efficiency of the cohesion policy? Our paper will present the institutions systems and mechanism, administrative procedures working in the cohesion policy and compare the Polish and Hungarian systems. It will analyze the directions of changes under the new cohesion policy regulation with regard to the functioning institutions system and national specificities. At the end of our analysis we try to identify good practices and make general recommendations.
Open access
Regional Development and Policy
Hungarian Social, Economic and Educational Studies
To the knowledge of the author, this is the first time it has been shown that interest rates that are extremely high by modern standards (100% and higher) are necessary within a zero-sum monetary system, and not just driven by greed. Extreme interest rates that appeared in various places and times reinforce the idea that hard money may have contributed to high rates of interest. Here a model is presented that examines the interest rate required to succeed as an investor in a zero-sum fixed quantity hard-money system. Even when the playing field is significantly tilted toward the investor, interest rates need to be much higher than expected. In a completely fair zero-sum system, an investor cannot break even without charging 100% interest. Even with a 5% advantage, an investor won't break even at 15% interest. From this it is concluded that what we consider usurious rates today are, within a hard-money system, driven by necessity. Cryptocurrency is a novel form of hard-currency. The inability to virtualize the money creates a system close to zero-sum because of the limited supply design. Therefore, within the bounds of a cryptocurrency system that limits money creation, interest rates must rise to levels that the modern world considers usury. It is impossible, therefore, that a cryptocurrency that is not expandable could take over a modern economy and replace modern fiat currency.
The Cuban government has implemented a series of agricultural transformations since 2007 to increase the country’s agricultural self-sufficiency and reduce its dependency on food imports. These include the transfer (in usufruct) of State-owned land to non-State producers (e.g. cooperatives and private farmers), moderate price reforms, the decentralization of decision making, and the gradual relaxation of existing forms of agricultural commercialization. As a result of these measures, the area planted, as well as physical output and agricultural yields (in selected non-sugar crop categories) have shown mixed results, but still remain below desired levels. There are three (3) fundamental unresolved aspects that have prevented Cuba’s agricultural sector from achieving the desired outcomes: (1) the need to achieve the “realization of property,” (2) the recognition and acceptance of the market as a complementary economic coordination mechanism, and (3) the absence of a systemic focus to achieve the successful completion of the agricultural production cycle. These unresolved aspects should be addressed through: (1) the consolidation of input markets, where producers can obtain essential inputs at prices that correspond to the prices they can obtain for their output, (2) greater autonomy to allow agricultural producers to freely decide when, where, and to whom they could sell their output, after social contracts have been fulfilled, (3) the diversification of the forms of agricultural commercialization to permit greater participation by non-State economic actors, (4) allowing agricultural producers to freely hire the labor necessary to sustain and increase production, and (5) providing agricultural producers with the financing and technical assistance necessary.
Public sector viewed as important with its numerous functions for a long time has recently become the locus of criticisms by many due to its unproductive and excessive size. One of the most emphasized factors which downsizes the public sector and makes it more efficient is the decentralization, moving more weight of this sector towards local administrations. There in fact, exists some predictions of how decentralization, leaving more of the public services and revenue sources to finance them, to sub-national government provides discipline in public sector. In this study, the disciplinary effects of decentralization on the public sector is tested using panel corrected standard errors procedure and the from OECD countries. The results show that decentralized public services and taxes up to some degree, limits the growth of public sector
Bitcoin has emerged as phenomenon of the financial markets as the currency without any central authority. Recent events of Bitcoin has risen question about its behavior and there is crucial question if the price of Bitcoin follows hypothesis of efficient markets. In this paper, there are introduced the main features of Bitcoin and analyzed its price behavior. We found out that price of the most famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin follows the hypothesis of efficient markets and it immediately react on publicly announce information. Furthermore, Bitcoin can be seen as standard economic good that is priced by interaction of supply and demand on the market. These factors can be driven by macro financial development or by speculative investors, but there weren’t found any significant impact of these factors on price of Bitcoin.
We survey recent results on the mathematical stability of Bitcoin protocol. Profitability and probability of a double spend are estimated in closed form with classical special functions. The stability of Bitcoin mining rules is analyzed and several theorems are proved using martingale and combinatorics techniques. In particular, the empirical observation of the stability of the Bitcoin protocol is proved. This survey article on the mathematics of Bitcoin is published by the Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society, vol.115, 2020, p.31-37. Continuation of arXiv:1601.05254 (EMS Newsletter, 100, 2016 p.32).
Adaptation finance is designed to help vulnerable populations withstand effects of climate variability and change. However, levels of vulnerability seldom determine finance distribution. Political and economic preferences of national and local government decision-makers tend to direct funding streams. This article takes an institutional approach to adaptation finance allocation by comparing decentralized and devolved local governance structures managing adaptation finance in Kenya before and after the Constitution of 2010. Prior to reforms, funding was directed through decentralized mechanisms operating within district councils and local authorities; recently, devolution of political, administrative, and fiscal decision-making to county governments coincided with piloting of new local adaptation funds. Theory suggests that devolution institutionalizes more participative decision-making and fairer allocations. Evidence suggests vulnerable communities are indeed more likely to access, design, and receive allocations of finance in devolved political systems.
Devolution, as other types of decentralization, profoundly changes governance relations in the health system. Devolution is meant to affect performance of the health system by transferring responsibilities and authority to locally elected governments. This study aimed to establish the effect of devolved governance on the performance of the health sector in Kenya. The guiding objectives included: To establish the influence of devolved procurement on the performance of the health sector; to determine the effect of devolved leadership on the performance of the health sector; to evaluate the effect of devolved resources on the performance of the health sector; and to establish the effect of devolved policy and regulatory framework on the performance of the health sector in Kenya. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The target population was 572 patients and health care providers from Nairobi and Mombasa County. Stratified sampling method was adopted at the rate of 10% to come up with a sample size of 57 respondents. Primary data was collected using questionnaires from all the respondents. Secondary data was sourced from health sector reports in Kenya from the year 2010 to 2014. The collected data was then analyzed through frequencies and percentages to enable the research come up with conclusions and recommendations for the study. The researcher employed the assistance of some computer tools, including the Statistical Programmes for Social Sciences (SPSS) and excel version 16 to analyze the data quantitatively. The analyzed data was presented in the form of graphs tables and charts. The Study established that devolution process has not been fully implemented and its effect has not been fully experienced in the health sector. The sector performance was averagely rated in the study and its contribution to GDP reduced by 0.5 percent by the end of the year 2013. The devolved procurement process, organizational leadership, resources allocation and availability as well as policy and regulatory framework had a significant influence on the performance of the level four hospitals and the overall health sector. It was recommended that the health sector players should improve in financing of critical health investment areas, particularly those relating to improving quality of care.
Albert Y. S. Lam, Ka-Cheong Leung, Victor O. K. Li
Due to various green initiatives, renewable energy will be massively incorporated into the future smart grid. However, the intermittency of the renewables may result in power imbalance, thus adversely affecting the stability of a power system. Frequency regulation may be used to maintain the power balance at all times. As electric vehicles (EVs) become popular, they may be connected to the grid to form a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) system. An aggregation of EVs can be coordinated to provide frequency regulation services. However, V2G is a dynamic system where the participating EVs come and go independently. Thus, it is not easy to estimate the regulation capacities for V2G. In a preliminary study, we modeled an aggregation of EVs with a queueing network, whose structure allows us to estimate the capacities for regulation-up and regulation-down separately. The estimated capacities from the V2G system can be used for establishing a regulation contract between an aggregator and the grid operator, and facilitating a new business model for V2G. In this paper, we extend our previous development by designing a smart charging mechanism that can adapt to given characteristics of the EVs and make the performance of the actual system follow the analytical model.
This thesis is devoted to low-resource off-path deanonymisation techniques for two popular systems, Tor and Bitcoin. Tor is a software and an anonymity network which in order to confuse an observer encrypts and re-routes traffic over random pathways through several relays before it reaches the destination. Bitcoin is a distributed payment system in which payers and payees can hide their identities behind pseudonyms (public keys) of their choice. The estimated number of daily Tor users is 2,000,000 which makes it arguable the most used anonymity network. Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency with market capitalization about 3.5 billion USD. In the first part of the thesis we study the Tor network. At the beginning we show how to remotely find out which Tor relays are connected. This effectively allows for an attacker to reduce Tor users' anonymity by ruling out impossible paths in the network. Later we analyze the security of Tor Hidden Services. We look at them from different attack perspectives and provide a systematic picture of what information can be obtained with very inexpensive means. We expose flaws both in the design and implementation of Tor Hidden Services that allow an attacker to measure the popularity of arbitrary hidden services, efficiently collect hidden service descriptors (and thus get a global picture of all hidden services in Tor), take down hidden services and deanonymize hidden services. In the second part we study Bitcoin anonymity. We describe a generic method to deanonymize a significant fraction of Bitcoin users and correlate their pseudonyms with their public IP addresses. We discover that using Bitcoin through Tor not only provides limited level of anonymity but also exposes the user to man-in-the middle attacks in which an attacker controls which Bitcoin blocks and transactions the user is aware of. We show how to fingerprint Bitcoin users by setting an "address cookie" on their computers. This can be used to correlate the same user across different sessions, even if he uses Tor, hidden-services or multiple proxies. Finally, we describe a new anonymous decentralized micropayments scheme in which clients do not pay services with electronic cash directly but submit proof of work shares which the services can resubmit to a crypto-currency mining pool. Services credit users with tickets that can later be used to purchases enhanced services.
In standard Walrasian auctions, the price of a good is defined as the point where the supply and demand curves intersect. Since both curves are generically regular, the response to small perturbations is linearly small. However, a crucial ingredient is absent of the theory, namely transactions themselves. What happens after they occur? To answer the question, we develop a dynamic theory for supply and demand based on agents with heterogeneous beliefs. When the inter-auction time is infinitely long, the Walrasian mechanism is recovered. When transactions are allowed to happen in continuous time, a peculiar property emerges: close to the price, supply and demand vanish quadratically, which we empirically confirm on the Bitcoin. This explains why price impact in financial markets is universally observed to behave as the square root of the excess volume. The consequences are important, as they imply that the very fact of clearing the market makes prices hypersensitive to small fluctuations.
A peer-to-peer network, enabling different parties to jointly store and run computations on data while keeping the data completely private. Enigma's computational model is based on a highly optimized version of secure multi-party computation, guaranteed by a verifiable secret-sharing scheme. For storage, we use a modified distributed hashtable for holding secret-shared data. An external blockchain is utilized as the controller of the network, manages access control, identities and serves as a tamper-proof log of events. Security deposits and fees incentivize operation, correctness and fairness of the system. Similar to Bitcoin, Enigma removes the need for a trusted third party, enabling autonomous control of personal data. For the first time, users are able to share their data with cryptographic guarantees regarding their privacy.
The availability of data on digital traces is growing to unprecedented sizes, but inferring actionable knowledge from large-scale data is far from being trivial. This is especially important for computational finance, where digital traces of human behavior offer a great potential to drive trading strategies. We contribute to this by providing a consistent approach that integrates various datasources in the design of algorithmic traders. This allows us to derive insights into the principles behind the profitability of our trading strategies. We illustrate our approach through the analysis of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency known for its large price fluctuations. In our analysis, we include economic signals of volume and price of exchange for USD, adoption of the Bitcoin technology, and transaction volume of Bitcoin. We add social signals related to information search, word of mouth volume, emotional valence, and opinion polarization as expressed in tweets related to Bitcoin for more than 3 years. Our analysis reveals that increases in opinion polarization and exchange volume precede rising Bitcoin prices, and that emotional valence precedes opinion polarization and rising exchange volumes. We apply these insights to design algorithmic trading strategies for Bitcoin, reaching very high profits in less than a year. We verify this high profitability with robust statistical methods that take into account risk and trading costs, confirming the long-standing hypothesis that trading based social media sentiment has the potential to yield positive returns on investment.