Proces globalizacji i rewolucji informacyjnej to zjawiska, ktĂłre determinujÄ rzeczywistoĆÄ spoĆeczno-gospodarczÄ wspĂłĆczesnego Ćwiata. ZnalazĆy one praktyczne odzwierciedlenie w funkcjonowaniu systemĂłw pieniÄĆŒnych w globalnej gospodarce Ćwiatowej, przede wszystkim w nowej postaci cyberwaluty, jakÄ jest bitcoin. Przedmiotem artykuĆu sÄ przesĆanki powstania, istota, zasady i sposĂłb dziaĆania bitcoina. Jego cechy oraz coraz szerszy zakres funkcjonowania tej cyberwaluty mogÄ w przyszĆoĆci zagraĆŒaÄ bezpieczeĆstwu w wymiarze spoĆecznym, gospodarczym i miÄdzynarodowym.
For the past five years, the bitcoin network constantly experience a growth in its size as more communities turn to accept the currency for payment exchanges. Using Flat File and a LevelDB of indices to save blocks on disk, bitcoin users require more memory to save the history of transaction. We focus on issues of memory management and access time in the bitcoin protocol using SQLite DataBase. With all the advantages of SQLite DataBase, it would be efficient if it is fitted in this architecture. The SQLite comes with many flavors one of which is its ability to support sql queries. Thus, instead of parsing indices to search a block from the database, a more powerful query can do the job.
This article is a review of the <i>Handbook of Digital Currency: Bitcoin, Innovation, Financial Instruments, and Big Data</i>, edited by David L.K. Chuen and published by Academic Press. <b>TOPICS:</b>Currency, big data/machine learning
Bitcoin is an innovative virtual currency, which has gained much commercial traction, yet is widely overlooked by the accounting profession. Due to its parallels with actual currencies and its growing use, accountants should be aware of what bitcoin is, including its risks and benefits, in order to properly leverage its business uses. Of the existing financial instruments, derivatives stand out in their potential to stabilize the bitcoin market. Bitcoin regulation is sparse, but evolving, especially in the face of the emerging bitcoin securities and derivatives markets. The accounting profession is poised to play a major role in facilitating the future of proper regulation and oversight of Bitcoin.
In 2014, the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) held its thirty-ninth annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. The relevance of the host city for much of the research presented at the conference was not lost on most members.A little over forty years ago the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in San Antonio v. Rodriguez [411 U.S. 1 (1973)] that education is not a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution. Parents had brought suit arguing that basing school financing on property wealth resulted in the unequal provision of education, presumably a fundamental right. The Supreme Court decision was a close one, at 5 to 4. If the decision had gone the other way, we would likely now have a national education system. Instead, what evolved is a complex system of education policy making, often described as a âmarble cake federalism,â where different levels of government intermingle in different ways in policies and programs or as a âRube-Goldberg-likeâ machine where complicated hoops and hurdles are required to produce relatively simple policy inputs.Something else has changed in the last forty years. The United States led the world throughout the twentieth century in expanding access to secondary and college education (Goldin and Katz 2000; Goldin 2001) but it is no longer the leader in accessânor for that matter doesit lead in performance. Relative to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, U.S. performance on the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2012) is middling at best, and secondary school completion is similar. And the rest of the world is fast catching up with the United States in college completion. In 1995, the United States ranked first in college graduation among OECD countries. Today, it ranks 19th out of the 28 countries studied (OECD 2014).In addition, the United Statesâtraditionally seen as the land of opportunityâhas relatively low educational mobility: The fraction of young adults in the United States with education levels lower than their parents is higher than the OECD average. Indeed, out of the 21 countries included in the analysis, the United States ranks 18th (OECD 2014). Lack of social mobility weakens social cohesion and trust in a society's institutions.Education ranking of countries is more than a simple top ten list. Education quality is a key ingredient for a country's economic growth (Nelson and Phelps 1966; Hanushek and Woessmann 2007). Major national economic policy leaders are increasingly stressing the importance of education for the country's economic well-being (e.g., Bernanke 2007). President Obama warns that âCountries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrowâ (Obama 2011). Indeed, he has called education âthe economic issue of our timeâ (Obama 2010).In a speech on inequality, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen (2014) identifies education as a key âcornerstoneâ of opportunity affecting intergenerational mobility. She points out that, unlike most other advanced countries, students from low income families in the United States often receive less public education support than students from more advantaged families because school financing is heavily based on subnational (state and local) taxes. The old problem associated with the Rodriguez case emerges again, but perhaps in a broader way. Most of our economic competitors have not only more equal funding but also national systems of education where both education policies, including performance standards and funding, are largely set for the country as a whole.The focus of this essay, as the title suggests, is to advocate for new and renewed efforts in analyzing the dynamics behind shifts in education governance in the United States and their effects on national policies, practices, and performance going forward.Much of the work presented at AEFP conferences evaluates education policies and practices using experimental methods, with random assignment, or rigorous quasi-experimental strategies, such as regression discontinuity designs. This work will, and should, always be a large and important part of AEFP's portfolio. It provides policy makers with valuable information about the likely productivity effects of different courses of action. The extent and ways in which policy makers and other influential parties respond to such information, however, is complicated. And the complications are also worth studying.In short, I am suggesting that it may serve us, and the field, well to broaden our horizon. In some sense, I suggest we revisit some of our earlier roots, and expend greater effort examining cross-level institutional incentives and constraints that affect federal, state, and local policy making, as well as the resources and political pressures at different levels that shape policies and foster or inhibit productive education change. This is a call for more research on the political economy of education policy making.Constitutionally, states control what is taught and who teaches. Curriculum and standards are formally within the purview of the state, as are human capital policies that set teacher and administrator certification requirements, hiring, pay, tenure, and so forth. The traditional federal role has been one of equity with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as its centerpiece. Federal funds have largely been intended to target special services to disadvantaged students without supplanting state and local funds. Accountability exercised by the federal government historically has been pretty much limited to distributional accountability. That is, ensuring that federal funds, which represent a little more than 10 percent of expenditures, are directed to disadvantaged students.The last few years, however, have been a game-changing time for federal education policy in the United States, with major implications for state and local education efforts and their direction. The federal efforts are heavily driven by a recognition of the importance of education policy for national economic objectives, as well as traditional equity objectives. For education researchers, it has been particularly heady because research has played a big role in shaping the thinking behind many of the changes, and continues to do so. The story of the game-changing is familiar to education policy observers, but a quick review of what has happened, and what is still uncertain, may help set the stage for thoughts on where additional research on education governance might be insightful.Passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001 was the first big game changer for federal education policy since the 1960s and, in many ways, it opened the door for more recent, bolder efforts.The law required states to establish academic performance standards for all students within their state, and to hold schools and school districts accountable for student progress in meeting those standards. Schools not making adequate academic progress faced sanctions. Standards and accountability, once the sole responsibility of state and local education agencies, were now required by Washington, even if many of the details were left to the states. In addition, teachers were expected to meet âhigh qualityâ standards, that is, meet state certification requirements. States could opt out of the NCLB requirements but they risked losing federal dollars. Some states balked at the law's provisions, and the increased reach of the federal government, but all eventually signed on. The legislation likely never would have passed without the strong bipartisan leadership of President George W. Bush and Senator Ted Kennedy.The expectation, specified in the law (which is still on the books at the time of this writing), is that all students would reach state-established academic proficiency levels by the 2013â14 school year. It turned out to be a humbling pipe dream.In 2011, about half of the nation's schools did not make adequate progress. Four states had school failure rates approaching 90 percent (Usher 2012). This was in spite of the fact that an easy way to meet the proficiency level was to lower standards. In fact, an analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics, using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as the standard, found that not only did states vary in the rigor of their standards, but fifteen states had lowered their standards between 2005 and 2007 to avoid sanctions (NCES 2011). A more recent analysis by Gary Phillips (2014), using international benchmarks, found that the standards gap between states with the highest standards and those with the lowest standards represents between three to four grade levels of performance. He concludes: â50 states going in 50 different directions cannot lead to national success that is globally competitiveâ (p. 4).But the story doesn't end thereâthe game changed again. Another set of major education policy shifts emerged in the latter part of the decade and is currently underway, and then another. All are intended to raise education performance nationally. All increase the federal role, and all are designed in ways to induce state cooperation.Under the Obama Administration, teacher policiesâtraditionally determined by statesâtook center stage. Three notable teacher policy shifts mark Game Changer 2. The first shifted the focal unit of accountability from schools, as in NCLB, to teachers. The second shifted the basis of teacher quality from input (i.e., qualifications) to output (student performance). The third shifted accountability based on student academic proficiency levels to accountability based on student academic gains. These are major policy changes.The shifts were accomplished through incentive-based reform initiatives developed by the executive branch of the government under the financial challenges of the Great Recession. State and local coffers were coming up short, and education jobs were at risk. The economic stimulus funds (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) provided $100 billion for education support. The funds were critically needed but they came with strings or, at least, a strong expectation that states focus on four priority areas of reform. One key area was âincreasing teacher effectivenessâ partly through evaluating teachers on the basis of student achievement.1The Obama Administration also used part of the stimulus funds to spur new ways of doing things. A national competitionâRace to the Topâwas established with $4.35 billion to support states proposing to make dramatic progress on the reform activities. The winners would be the pacesetters of reform. The criteria used to evaluate state proposals gave heaviest weight to reforms focused on âimproving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance.â Weight was also given to proposals that fully developed and used individual-level longitudinal data systems to track individual student performance gains to inform instructional efforts. At the time the NCLB legislation was passed, only a small handful of states had the data capacity to assess student gains and to link students to their teachers. By 2011, it was different. Since 2005, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded more than half a billion dollars to states to develop individual level longitudinal education data systems. The number of states able to link student data with their teacher increased from four in 2005 to forty-four in 2011.Most states, hungry for financial support, competed to be bold reformers of human capital policies, an entrenched policy area that was traditionally mired in politics, complex sets of state laws, and practices heavily shaped by local collective bargaining agreements. To ensure that real reform would occur, state proposals had to be endorsed by state officials, local administrators, and unions. Eleven states and the District of Columbia were winners in the first two rounds of the competition and an additional seven states won awards in 2011.2 In all, nearly 40 percent of states competed and won, thereby accepting the human capital reform challenge.New changes emerged in 2011, again with incentives provided by the executive branch to induce state pursuit of favored policies. A divided U.S. Congress was unable to come to agreement on reauthorization of NCLB, and many schools and districts were facing serious sanctions for not achieving the performance levels specified in NCLB. The Obama Administration agreed to grant states waivers from key provisions in NCLB law but, again, there were strings attached. In exchange for relief of some of the terms of NCLB, states had to propose a plan in line with the Administration's reform agenda. Again, key among the items was evaluating teachers, in part, on the basis of studentsâ test scores. By August 2012, thirty-three states had been granted waivers. Many waivers expired at the end of the 2013â14 academic year, and the U.S. Department of Education granted extensions to states for another year on the basis of reform progress. Indeed, seven states that had been especially successful with developing teacher evaluation systems were eligible to apply for a fast-tracked extended renewal through 2018â19. In effect, many states are continuing to negotiate their education policies with the executive branch of the federal government.Although the financial incentives and waivers, combined with tough economic times, help explain why states were willing to take on the thorny problem of teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation, they do not explain why the Obama Administration focused laser-like on teachers.The policy emphasis shift from schools to teachers was driven largely by research findings that began emerging in the mid-2000sâfindings that are difficult to dismiss. Numerous studies by different researchers, utilizing data from different states using different tests and in different policy of this research has been by AEFP key findings are the most important school student performance. to the and by more studies that teacher quality for a of the in student performance than other school findings also that teachers have effects on and of their students and productivity among teachers is In a Hanushek that teachers the top of the performance are for about a year and a half of academic gains for their teachers the produce only about a half year in teacher effectiveness within schools is at as large as the between Again, since studies have found in teacher effectiveness within schools that are often than the between studies based on longitudinal data from states the teacher do not represent teacher quality percent of a school is for and academic and heavily in teacher and higher has but research the are not as strong as For teachers over their first years of the to to out by about year In short, the findings suggest that we have traditionally a large part of our instructional dollars on or that to have little on student performance as traditionally and findings policy If teachers are the of large in student we to teachers. are the making the most in The large in productivity among teachers an that doing much is, are not as traditional human capital policies in education to if the is as large as the between schools, basing policies on performance will much of the in by the policy initiatives described a strong emphasis on teacher performance between and 2012, more than states legislation annual of teachers, based partly on student test and the to key such as 2012). effects were In 2007 in for percent of teachers in their third year of in 2012, this to percent In the last few years, of states have changed These changes are in a large by the Education of the are also in the in brought that protected teachers from and thereby studentsâ state to an equal The were heavily based on research findings about teacher The found the research and ruled for the A case is making its way through the in has also about ways to develop both through programs and in this area is and often For a random of for school teachers, a target that we might would be likely to from no on teacher or student 2011). States, and began in to link effectiveness to programs for both accountability and By 2014, states teacher performance data of with their teacher is on both what as well as to for research is in the or of and associated a A recent review by National for of Education found that, there is teacher programs are important for teacher effectiveness in the more research is needed to their In the what is is that some teachers are more than and are to develop more of teacher effectiveness using of the last decade of education reform in the United States has led to agreement among policy on at two reform and academic standards. and what is taught are both The focus on teachers was we are with what in the standards (i.e., the and performance that NCLB required standards, but as by the were states. In addition, the accountability provisions in NCLB presented States were their standards and the public and the federal government a or for their Changer this problem by to establish national standards in and for State Standards that are with international are the of reform. At a they the basis for state policies and state accountability policies. they would have little President of the State Board of it we from the of state standards academic standards so do policies to student and school accountability. many other policies be and including state instructional and college teacher and other the federal government could not establish national standards for the states, but it did their by points to states that standards in the to the and by favored in for states that the National Association and the of State had led the of the standards in and control their with a to the of the standards but support from the and was large and The provided support and over in financial support to help states work on standards. The also to political support for the standards by to key institutional the political including teacher the of and the National Education the U.S. of and political on the right and and influential state the federal government did not financial support for the of national standards, it did support the of for states to 2011, states and the District of Columbia had the standards, and did so states did The however, is a target as is in at a handful of states that are to or the standards. The to teachers of the has also as well as the to to be is the federal control in is seen as an by the federal government that is likely to lead to greater federal control over instructional and the of individual student the teachers and their about for teacher a the standards in the those of most states. is a may an even in teacher effectiveness than we currently In addition, to be teacher and instructional are not fully in The of has for a on and its in has support for the such as the passed a in the in its and it as an effort by a of are for the are for the will all this are we and what we will be the for education quality and education and eventually for increased national economic and national social and economic the last two or the role of the executive branch of the federal government in education policy making increased political under the leadership of George W. George W. and have to this in ways the of national education standards and a national system for educational accountability, even the U.S. such to the states. At a the of the federal and state levels of government are currently in in and and will take in to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the Congress where many recent policies, such as annual student as an by the federal executive branch that be that affect the governance of education in the United States serious and is at AEFP could a number of research associated with the political economy of U.S. education and in ways to the and on education governance would in focus and from much of our and important work evaluating education practices and policies, but it would this It would help us the dynamics of reform in the United economy in the of a policy research and they for analysis and of come to The first three focus on what we might call the political economy of education information the education policy and policy These are especially key as education policies have shifted from education policies to policies using relatively performance The on the role of to what and in what ways, information about the of education performance affect policy findings about different to student performance (e.g., teacher policies, policies, and graduation more or less or influential in different ways, at the state, and local policy In what ways do of information and to that information states with different political or economic to what extent do standards and performance information state and local spur through competition and another there an of that, under strong information to education To what extent do political leaders to performance information in ways that might affect its to the what are the and that for education reforms at different levels of government and different what are the of different going The role of is among the most to are a major political at the national and state policy and a policies at the local level through collective are but have in important areas of education policy are the most important school input affecting student performance. are in the difficult of the of all their it is increasingly that some teachers are much more than from on an earlier were
International legal positivism in some of its radical forms in the 21st century operates as theological voluntarism. It is the ambition to translate an overwhelmingly practical art into a general theory of law that has squeezed these theories into a theological structure of thought. If such a thing could ever exist, a general theory of law ought to reveal the role played by morality in the normative pronouncements about law. However, a general theory can only emerge at the expense of taking the existential decision about identifying law with morality or severing law from morality.2 Hans Kelsen writes that âlaw is an order of human behavioursâ.3 But is this order founded upon morality or not? This very question articulates a fragmented view of reality falling between fact (morality) and value (law) that we have learned to take for granted.4 Practitioners know that the correct professional approach is to be interested in the legal aspects of a case and not in its moral aspects. Moreover, both in theory and practice, one can often limit oneself to act as a morally responsible person.5 There are, however, several sensitive areas in which even minimal theoretical work calls for the adoption of a moral-normative standpoint.6 However, the âgeneral theoryâ type of thinking urges the theological question7 â will the law punish my immorality or not?8 The theoretician devising a general theory will lay out the question of morality and law in absolute terms. Independently of the answer, articulating this question involves the assumption that the lawyer should take a theological approach, which is also reflected in the non-neutral outcome of the following two absolutist approaches.9 If law is to prescribe what is moral, every legal judgment is a moral judgment about good and evil. Law is endowed with power in order to apply a moral code, and secular law becomes superfluous. The second approach, based on the separability of law and morality, denies that the normativity of law makes claims connected with morality. What is at stake is not whether law ignores or refrains from expressing whether a particular behaviour is moral or not but, rather, the assertion of the idea that no violation of the law is a moral evil and no legal judgment is a moral condemnation. Morality is irrelevant to this approach. Both types of general theory work in the realm of the ideal with an a priori type of human being. The sinner belongs to the first category; the god to the second.10 In both cases, the theologian-theoretician devising a general theory employs law that works in history in order to model behaviour in practice. In the first case, the human being becomes absolutely dependent on the ideal type to which she has to conform, the supreme legislator (presumably representing God) being in charge of its implementation. As if in parallel, in the second choice, the morality of human beings is considered to be autonomous from that of the supreme legislator (embodied by the people, the consent of the state and so on). A theory of law that demarcates strictly legal norms declares that moral normativity in its varied forms, including reason, nature, justice, politics, the real world or humanity, never comes into contact with legal judgments.11 A human beingâs behaviour ought to be examined through law without this type of considerations. Law as ideality is, as it were, enclosed â it is disconnected from any claim to substantive moral content, but, more importantly, it is also disconnected from the sphere of practical action in which the legal actor takes a moral decision when necessary. The troubled history of natural law theories proves that the first option described above has never been attempted, let alone implemented.12 Moreover, there is no moral code that can produce a complete system of (international) law â not even Sharia does that.13 Equally, the few alleged attempts made in the realm of theory to produce any form of neutral normativity, independent from morality, have failed with similar regularity. The (healthy) inconsistency of the formulations attempted to this end has been laid bare by the fact that their authors have introduced rational considerations of morality and justice when this was felt to be necessary or unavoidable.14 The condition of voluntarism concerns a classical position of Western theology that differentiates between the absolute power of God to adopt any possible course of action without contradiction and the divine ordained power by which God is committed to act in a certain manner. While we are moving within the realm of strict theology, the voluntarist element appears when emphasis is placed on all of the logical possibilities open to God to create different worlds. Everything from the beginning is considered to be contingent (âit could have been otherwiseâ) and therefore no rationality can bind the will of God.15 Instead of observing the reality around him, the 14th-century voluntarist theologian felt compelled to focus his epistemological view on the normative character of Godâs command. He accordingly focused on the idea that Godâs command was binding even though he considered it to be, logically speaking, deprived of inherent rationality, morality and so on â or in modern formalistic terms, empty and neutral.16 In his book, Pure Theory of Law, Kelsen sketches a similar type of theological voluntarism with some wit: From the point of view of a theory of positive law, there is no fact that by itself â that is, regardless of a consequence stipulated by the legal order â is a delict. There are no mala in se, but only mala prohibita. This is only the consequence of the principle, generally recognized in criminal law: nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena singe lege; and this principle which is valid not only for criminal law, not only for criminal but for all delicts, not only for punishments but for all sanctions, is merely a consequence of legal positivism.17 Kelsen continues by explaining that it was self-evident that certain behaviour was criminalized when the legal authority regarded it as âharmful to societyâ. However, âfrom the point of view of an analysis of the immanent meaning of the legal order, this circumstance is irrelevant for the concept of delictâ.18 The invocation of the positivist principle nullum crimen sine lege makes Kelsenâs thought look voluntarist it a of the nullum crimen sine lege and nulla poena sine lege that in to limit the power of the and the of the crimen sine lege a from all that is morally The idea was to the of a as a criminal only on the of what has been as law. Kelsen made his claim to that there was no that this principle to that there are no that are not or only have been by law. it does not as that when one human behaviour from a positive law one a the principle of nullum crimen sine lege the lawyer to to positive law, if there is In the principle to law in criminal law of any but it is not its to morality from a legal point of in his to Kelsen articulates his theory with all the in law of a voluntarist in law is not by any particular rationality or Law could have The two in International A and and the of International A Theory of the of in the epistemological of theological voluntarism. The legal theoretical ambition of the two appears to be to one should of an law that state consent at the that morality be placed law. In a similar to century legal the existential by these is by not by Moreover, the two authors to apply the radical of a positivist general theory of law to this theory but, rather, it â Kelsenâs this both the by their legal theoretician the of in Kelsenâs normativity of law. In the and theoretical first by of normativity by to without about its However, it is no that several of to legal In the of and this theory appears to a of power to the law to which have an of in which legal are being the of of law, one with and of the between the of law and and of the of law to some of the in this law is connected to such a theory the of in of from the of law. However, the theory type of normativity of in International Law and and the of International Law an ideal for law, it to its The of its politics, not to its morality, makes the â the theological type of thinking as Kelsen law is and ought not to be with of morality. as was the case with this type of theory to with to the What are the of the of law the can legal to that and all of the of the to an ideal of law and morality has never of the theoretical of law, and of such as or one to whether be the to take such a However, this is not to that the not and and that in some the modern The International in a a of around the general of positivism and legal theory by and is by a different theoretical In the of the of the two which is that the authors are the of this the a positivist and a and with the of and â and the also in their of the the power of the for law or attempts to the between natural and positivist law. In this the of the of both expressing the in law â which is, in their positivist â and the of positivism in The forms a of with the which this for its to through the the in upon this Moreover, not only is the an independent but of the also form of their that that one can with is that are about law. the theological of positivism are in the the of the in the the adoption of a moral point of view in law, with the of substantive by which the of law can be In morality is with what the of the century has to their in radical positivism in their and have in or even Kelsenâs and â does as with a minimal of natural of the adopt the with to the of However, one the in the on this particular the that the to the several of the in to theological voluntarism are In the one does not that is about the to be a in to the theories of that made claims The of legal is but are with the of with a world in which is to be in of legal In this the legal of the century works in with what is in reality and is not on of of legal theory or â the as on the through This about is with to Pure Theory is to legal theory in in International A In the is often with the legal theory of to a decision of the authority is as as a legal In the have Kelsenâs Pure Theory as both of more to of Kelsenâs work and articulating the of and the law to Kelsen with the create Kelsen this idea Moreover, the of to Kelsenâs legal thinking is not to the emphasis on the of in law. In Kelsenâs was the very question that ought to in the of law. on the of was to whether the to and Kelsen that it was that the itself its to be that the of could be when the felt to be open the question of â the state or the itself was also and Kelsen The question of be by no decision necessary. But such a does not in law. There are no in only by the The is the can never be only two of Kelsenâs one his in to and his in the of the law to be by the are in order to that is not a particular from the of the of the legal the of is and is in the 21st a when several of legal Kelsen have legal and have to and in of It is only natural that the is to be no a in the of law. 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We examine the relationship between the organization of a multi-divisional firm and its ability to adapt production decisions to changes in the environment. We show that even if lower-level manag-ers have superior information about local conditions, and incentive conflicts are negligible, a centralized organization can be better at adapting to local information than a decentralized one. As a result, and in contrast to what is commonly argued, an increase in product market competition that makes adaptation more important can favor centralization rather than decentralization. (JEL D21, D23, F23, L22) The organization theorist Chester Barnard and the economist Friedrich Hayek shared the view that the âeconomic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place â (Hayek 1945, 524). But whereas Hayek viewed adaptation as an autonomous process, undertaken by individual economic actors, Barnard (1938) stressed the ability of organizations to engage in what Oliver Williamson (1996, 2002) calls âcoordinated adaptation.â Williamson (1996, 103), referring to Barnard and challenging Hayek, argues that:
Michel Abdallaâ, Fabrice Benhamouda, Philip MacKenzie
J-PAKE is an efficient password-authenticated key exchange protocol that is included in the Open SSL library and is currently being used in practice. We present the first proof of security for this protocol in a well-known and accepted model for authenticated key-exchange, that incorporates online and offline password guessing, concurrent sessions, forward secrecy, server compromise, and loss of session keys. This proof relies on the Decision Square Diffie-Hellman assumption, as well as a strong security assumption for the non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs in the protocol (specifically, simulation-sound extractability). We show that the Schnorr proof-of-knowledge protocol, which was recommended for the J-PAKE protocol, satisfies this strong security assumption in a model with algebraic adversaries and random oracles, and extend the full J-PAKE proof of security to this model. Finally, we show that by modifying the recommended labels in the Schnorr protocol used in J-PAKE, we can achieve a security proof for J-PAKE with a tighter security reduction.
Ulrich RĂŒhrmair, J. L. MartĂnez-Hurtado, Xiaolin Xu, Christian Kraeh · 8 authors
We discuss the question of how physical statements can be proven over digital communication channels between two parties (a "prover" and a "verifier") residing in two separate local systems. Examples include: (i) "a certain object in the prover's system has temperature X°C", (ii) "two certain objects in the prover's system are positioned at distance X", or (iii) "a certain object in the prover's system has been irreversibly altered or destroyed". As illustrated by these examples, our treatment goes beyond classical security sensors in considering more general physical statements. Another distinctive aspect is the underlying security model: We neither assume secret keys in the prover's system, nor do we suppose classical sensor hardware in his system which is tamper-resistant and trusted by the verifier. Without an established name, we call this new type of security protocol a "virtual proof of reality" or simply a "virtual proof" (VP). In order to illustrate our novel concept, we give example VPs based on temperature sensitive integrated circuits, disordered optical scattering media, and quantum systems. The corresponding protocols prove the temperature, relative position, or destruction/modification of certain physical objects in the prover's system to the verifier. These objects (so-called "witness objects") are prepared by the verifier and handed over to the prover prior to the VP. Furthermore, we verify the practical validity of our method for all our optical and circuit-based VPs in detailed proof-of-concept experiments. Our work touches upon, and partly extends, several established concepts in cryptography and security, including physical unclonable functions, quantum cryptography, interactive proof systems, and, most recently, physical zero-knowledge proofs. We also discuss potential advancements of our method, for example "public virtual proofs" that function without exchanging witness objects between the verifier and the prover.
Open access
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Eli BenâSasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Matthew Green, Eran Tromer · 5 authors
Non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs (NIZKs) are a powerful cryptographic tool, with numerous potential applications. However, succinct NIZKs (e.g., zk-SNARK schemes) necessitate a trusted party to generate and publish some public parameters, to be used by all provers and verifiers. This party is trusted to correctly run a probabilistic algorithm (specified by the the proof system) that outputs the public parameters, and publish them, without leaking any other information (such as the internal randomness used by the algorithm), violating either requirement may allow malicious parties to produce convincing "proofs" of false statements. This trust requirement poses a serious impediment to deploying NIZKs in many applications, because a party that is trusted by all users of the envisioned system may simply not exist. In this work, we show how public parameters for a class of NIZKs can be generated by a multi-party protocol, such that if at least one of the parties is honest, then the result is secure (in both aforementioned senses) and can be subsequently used for generating and verifying numerous proofs without any further trust. We design and implement such a protocol, tailored to efficiently support the state-of-the-art NIZK constructions with short and easy-to-verify proofs (Parno et al. IEEE S&P '13, Ben-Sasson et al. USENIX Sec '14, Danezis et al., ASIACRYPT '14). Applications of our system include generating public parameters for systems such as Zero cash (Ben-Sasson et al. IEEE S&P '13) and the scalable zero-knowledge proof system of (Ben-Sasson et al. CRYPTO '14).
Joseph Bonneau, Andrew Miller, Jeremy Clark, Arvind Narayanan · 6 authors
Bit coin has emerged as the most successful cryptographic currency in history. Within two years of its quiet launch in 2009, Bit coin grew to comprise billions of dollars of economic value despite only cursory analysis of the system's design. Since then a growing literature has identified hidden-but-important properties of the system, discovered attacks, proposed promising alternatives, and singled out difficult future challenges. Meanwhile a large and vibrant open-source community has proposed and deployed numerous modifications and extensions. We provide the first systematic exposition Bit coin and the many related crypto currencies or 'altcoins.' Drawing from a scattered body of knowledge, we identify three key components of Bit coin's design that can be decoupled. This enables a more insightful analysis of Bit coin's properties and future stability. We map the design space for numerous proposed modifications, providing comparative analyses for alternative consensus mechanisms, currency allocation mechanisms, computational puzzles, and key management tools. We survey anonymity issues in Bit coin and provide an evaluation framework for analyzing a variety of privacy-enhancing proposals. Finally we provide new insights on what we term disinter mediation protocols, which absolve the need for trusted intermediaries in an interesting set of applications. We identify three general disinter mediation strategies and provide a detailed comparison.
The recent increase in reported incidents of surveillance and security breaches compromising users' privacy call into question the current model, in which third-parties collect and control massive amounts of personal data. Bit coin has demonstrated in the financial space that trusted, auditable computing is possible using a decentralized network of peers accompanied by a public ledger. In this paper, we describe a decentralized personal data management system that ensures users own and control their data. We implement a protocol that turns a block chain into an automated access-control manager that does not require trust in a third party. Unlike Bit coin, transactions in our system are not strictly financial -- they are used to carry instructions, such as storing, querying and sharing data. Finally, we discuss possible future extensions to block chains that could harness them into a well-rounded solution for trusted computing problems in society.
The editorial board announced this article has been retracted on July 19, 2016. If you have any further question, please contact us at: cis@ccsenet.org
Evelyn Waweru, Catherine Goodman, Sarah Kedenge, Benjamin Tsofa · 5 authors
In many African countries, user fees have failed to achieve intended access and quality of care improvements. Subsequent user fee reduction or elimination policies have often been poorly planned, without alternative sources of income for facilities. We describe early implementation of an innovative national health financing intervention in Kenya; the health sector services fund (HSSF). In HSSF, central funds are credited directly into a facility's bank account quarterly, and facility funds are managed by health facility management committees (HFMCs) including community representatives. HSSF is therefore a finance mechanism with potential to increase access to funds for peripheral facilities, support user fee reduction and improve equity in access. We conducted a process evaluation of HSSF implementation based on a theory of change underpinning the intervention. Methods included interviews at national, district and facility levels, facility record reviews, a structured exit survey and a document review. We found impressive achievements: HSSF funds were reaching facilities; funds were being overseen and used in a way that strengthened transparency and community involvement; and health workers' motivation and patient satisfaction improved. Challenges or unintended outcomes included: complex and centralized accounting requirements undermining efficiency; interactions between HSSF and user fees leading to difficulties in accessing crucial user fee funds; and some relationship problems between key players. Although user fees charged had not increased, national reduction policies were still not being adhered to. Finance mechanisms can have a strong positive impact on peripheral facilities, and HFMCs can play a valuable role in managing facilities. Although fiduciary oversight is essential, mechanisms should allow for local decision-making and ensure that unmanageable paperwork is avoided. There are also limits to what can be achieved with relatively small funds in contexts of enormous need. Process evaluations tracking (un)intended consequences of interventions can contribute to regional financing and decentralization debates.
To examine whether the recent price patterns and transaction costs of Bitcoin represent a general characteristic of decentralized virtual currencies, we analyze virtual currencies in online games that have been voluntarily managed by individuals since 1990s. We find that matured game currencies have price stability similar to that of small size equities or gold, and their transaction costs are sometimes lower than real currencies. Assuming that virtual currencies with a longer history can provide an estimate for Bitcoin's prospects, we project that Bitcoin will be less influenced by speculative trades and become a low cost alternative to real currencies.
For money-like informational commodities the notions of architectural adequacy and evolutionary adequacy are proposed as the first two stages of a moneyness maturity hierarchy. Then three classes of informational commodities are distinguished: exclusively informational commodities, strictly informational commodities, and ownable informational commodities. For each class money-like instances of that commodity class, as well as monies of that class may exist. With the help of these classifications and making use of previous assessments of Bitcoin, it is argued that at this stage Bitcoin is unlikely ever to evolve into a money. Assessing the evolutionary adequacy of Bitcoin is perceived in terms of a search through its design hull for superior design alternatives. An extensive comparison is made between the search for superior design alternatives to Bitcoin and the search for design alternatives to a specific and unconventional view on the definition of fractions.
This post is an excerpt from my dissertation which can be found here via figshare. Note: The contained information pertains strictly to the US legal system, and is based on information I (Anthony Salvagno) alone researched. I am in no way a lawyer and offer no legal advice, but thought it would be foolish to not share basic copyright and patent law policy for scientific consideration. One of the biggest arguments I hear against open research is the fear about not being able to protect your intellectual property, also known as the fear of being scooped. The biggest oversight in that argument is that IP violations occur in traditional scientific culture both accidentally and maliciously. In an open environment, however, there is a greater risk of attracting this behavior if only because scientific research is made publicly available. With that said, there is nothing about being open that is any more inviting of harmful activity than in the traditional system. In fact, because of the current US legal system, being open may be more beneficial to protecting scientific information. With regards to the US legal system, there are two primary protections available to scientists: (1) copyright law would protect recorded scientific information, for example data and ideas, while (2) patent law would protect scientific processes, production, procedures, etc. Despite what is commonly believed, in no way does open notebook science prevent either protection from applying to scientific intellectual property. Open notebook science can actually stake your claim on IP and provide immediate protection. For patent law, patent protection is granted for one year once a work is publicly disclosed. If a patent is not filed, the IP becomes public domain and a patent can never be filed. In the case of copyright law, copyright applies from the moment of fixation (the moment scientific information is documented). In both cases, open notebook science can be used either as a defensive tactic to protect IP, or as an offensive tactic to prevent others from profiting from scientific IP. Copyright Law Copyright law is essentially very simple, and has been made increasingly simple since it was originally expanded upon in the US Constitution. The most recent addendum to this statute came about in the 1976 Copyright Act, which defined rights to copyright holders (exclusive rights), how copyright is achieved, and even what does/does not constitute infringement (fair use). While the law is simple in principle, copyright infringement is not necessarily black and white. In some instances it is questionable as to what is even copyrightable. In others, the matter of fair use is debatable. Even when there is infringement, it can be tough to prove because there are varying degrees of copying or âborrowing.â The bare-essential rules of copyright law can be seen in Table 1: Copyright is applied immediately from the moment any work is tangibly recorded, both publicly and privately. To be protected a work needs to be original (not novel) and there needs to be a minimum element of creativity (known as expression). The exclusive rights provided to copyright holders are reproduction, distribution, derivation, performance, and display. Copyright infringement is a federal offense! Even though copyright is applied immediately, in order to file suit for infringement a copyright needs to be registered with the US Copyright Office. A copyright is not violated if it has been determined that the infringer has a fair use of the material. Fair use is a broad definition and is only created as a defense in infringement suits. Table 1: Bare-essentials of copyright law. Rule 2 from Table 1 may reveal that copyright law doesnât apply to most of science intellectual property, because it is fact based and process driven. Patent law was developed for this very reason. While there are no statutes against having dual protection in the form of patents and copyrights, it is not likely to receive copyright protection if there is patent protection since the copyright lasts much longer than the patent. But thatâs not to say none of science is copyrightable. In fact, journal articles are in fact copyrighted. It can be interpreted that there is creative expression in organizing scientific discoveries (which are fact based) and that would make them copyrightable. Journals hold the copyrights for publications and have exclusive right to copy and distribute the articles any any material contained within. And there are cases where theyâve tried to enforce it. In that link, the author tries to distribute (via publishing in her blog) figures from a publication and receives a cease and desist letter. Unfortunately it will never be known if there was a violation because the infringement never went to trial. She made an argument for fair use, which probably has some grounds, but skirted around the issue by recreating the figures using the original data (which is NOT copyrightable), thus making her own original figures which are therefore copyrightable. There is a chance that she has no fair use argument since her reuse (even through attribution) is a clear violation of distribution rights and can be viewed as falling within the same scope of the original publication. In the case of publications, scientists waive their copyright upon submission and acceptance for publication and dissemination, and grant that copyright to the journal. Not all scientific output is formatted for publication, or released at all. In that case, it would greatly benefit scientists to publish their figures via an open notebook to provide copyright protection for their research (if that is in fact the goal). With regards to the traditional science system, scientists are offered protection from the moment they record their data and create figures based on that data. They are even protected at conferences where they present their research (either via an oral or poster format). This is specifically useful in the case of scientific scooping, which isnât as rampant as we make it out to be but is still a major fear in the community. If there is a case of potential copyright infringement, you have the right to file suit (once you apply for copyright). If you can prove there was access to your research findings and there is substantial copying you may even win your case. If you are an open scientist, in that you publish your research findings online before peer reviewed publication, you may be in an even better position. You are granted the same rights as a traditional scientist. In the open case, however, the proof of access is much easier to demonstrate since a simple Google search can turn up your findings. The burden is then that you prove there is evidence of copying, which is hard enough as it is. Because of all the possible interpretations of copyright application to science, I highly advocate the use of the Creative Commons licenses. The CC0 (public domain), CC-BY (use with attribution), and CC-BY-SA (use with attribution and share alike) afford the copyright owner the ability to share their research findings with the community and in turn allow the community to share, use, and reuse those findings without fear of retaliation. It is incredibly important to note that using the CC licenses (with the exception of the CC0) does NOT waive all exclusive rights as a copyright holder. They allow you to waive your rights as long as the reuser of the original work attributes, shares, etc (per terms of the license) in turn. If those stipulations are infringed, you are free to take action. In fact, there is legal precedence of such action. The licenses provide a means for others to use information and data without worrying about moral ambiguities, legal issues, and in turn promote a culture of sharing and attribution. With the CC licenses there will be more societal pressure to do the right thing. When credibility is involved social pressure can work wonders. For more information, please refer to the US Copyright Office website. Patent Law The America Invents Act was initiated in 2011 and institutes some new changes to patent law. The newest inclusion to the law is that now patents are given based on a first-to-file system, whereas previously they were given through a first-to-invent system. This change was implemented on March 16, 2013 as a way to conform to international policy, but also to decrease the burden of the US Patent Office in identifying first-inventor which can be extremely complicated and arduous. In a first-to-file system, a patent will be granted to the first person to file a patent for a given invention. While the system is as simple as it sounds, it tends to give advantages to larger entities with the resources and efficiency to file patents for every invention conceived. It is outside the scope of this writing to argue the merits of a first-to-file or first-to-invent system, but this is mentioned because there are a couple of workarounds to the first-to-file mandate. The first is through the filing of a provisional application, and the second is through public disclosure. In both cases, there is a one-year grace period under which a patent must be filed lest it become public domain. The provisional application is a low cost option that grants an inventor protection from competitive patent filings. The fee is $125 for small entity inventors, such as individuals, and $250 for large entities like corporations. The intellectual property remains a secret during the provisional period until patent. Public disclosure is a free alternative to the provisional patent, in the sense that there is nothing to file with the patent office. With this method, the details of an invention become public information, but no competitor may file a patent. Scientifically speaking, patentable items include processes, designs, and technology of all sort (although computer programs are hard to patent or copyright). It is usually advantageous to maintain secrecy when dealing with intellectual property, and this culture is especially prevalent in science. As such many universities and institutions have legal services that aid scientists in patent filings. In an effort to maintain confidentiality, it is highly suggested by these services to file provisional applications for all inventions. Much like copyright, the ultimate goal of a patent is to prevent competitors from stealing and reproducing a work without the inventor benefitting. It is little known fact that patents become public information after filing, generally 18 months after the earliest filing date. It is entirely possible for competitors to analyze a patent and create a ânon-obviousâderivation of the work that can then be patented. In this scenario the benefit of the patent application is essentially lost. Open notebook science can be a major benefit to the new patent process. Since it does cost money to file a provisional application, ONS (or other web disclosure) would provide a free alternative to the provisional application. The only difference between the two routes is that through ONS, the patent is immediately public information, while the provisional application maintains invention secrecy. Because the patent will eventually be public domain, the incentive to innovate is delayed a bit through the provisional process. While ONS publicly discloses a scientific creation and encourages potential modification, it does not promote/encourage stealing the idea. Scientists are still protected from patent infringement. Now, if a competitor sees the notebook entries and makes non-obvious changes to the idea, then they can be granted a new patent, if filed. That is no different from how the patent process currently operates, it simply speeds up the process. Filing a provision for every idea ever produced and paying $125 every time is a waste of money and resources. It is highly unlikely that every idea/invention will come to fruition. It also gives the US patent office a lot of unnecessary paperwork, and could actually stifle innovation and creativity. ONS would in turn allow a researcher to disseminate their ideas and protect the best ones for the original creator. Resources could be better used to fight for the best ideas and allow others to develop the ideas that wonât necessarily get the same level of attention or ever be produced. In this way ONS could be used as a defensive tactic to protect a scientist from losing his/her best ideas. It is also possible for open notebook science to be used as an offensive tactic. In this maneuver, the documentation of ideas born from discussions or other endeavors creates prior art (which is essentially the same as public disclosure). An invention disclosed in prior art is exempt from patent protection. So in the case of public disclosure via ONS inventions would be blocked from filing for patent. Hypothetically, a researcher could publish any and all ideas, techniques, or technologies and prevent all competitors (and peers) from filing for patent. In the interest of sharing research information, open notebook science may be the best protection against impediments in the scientific process.
Over the past decade, a large number of studies have shown that in advanced democracies policymakers are more likely to represent the preferences of high-income citizens than the preferences of low-income citizens (e.g., Gilens 2005, 2012; Bartels 2008; Ellis 2012; Giger, Rosset and Bernauer 2012; Hayes 2012; Rigby and Wright 2013). In a quest to understand this income bias in substantive representation, several authors have recently suggested that the persistent descriptive underrepresentation of low-income groups in policymaking institutions may explain why political decisions are so frequently skewed toward the preferences of the affluent (e.g., Carnes 2012; Carnes and Lupu 2015).2 However, although this is a plausible explanation, many previous studies dealing with the consequences of descriptive representation have failed to find an effect of policymakers' incomes or social class backgrounds on their behavior in office (e.g., Matthews 1984; Norris and Lovenduski 1995). In this essay, we argue that descriptive representation may indeed have an effect on policymaking, yet for it to be consequential three necessary conditions must be satisfied. We explain in the next section what these conditions are. We then present research that we have recently conducted on representation in the Swiss parliament. Our analyses show that although Swiss legislators coming from lower-income backgrounds appear to have distinct preferences over policy, these differences in preferences do not translate into distinct behavior in the policymaking arena. Finally, drawing upon the three necessary conditions described below, the last section provides some suggestions as to why we fail to find an effect of descriptive representation on legislative behavior in the current Swiss context. The descriptive representation of different income groups may be important simply on symbolic grounds, since the legitimacy and authority of a ârepresentativeâ body such as parliament can be undermined if it fails to reflect the composition of the population that it is intended to represent (e.g., Norris and Lovenduski 1995). If we assume, however, that constituents care primarily about policy outcomes (e.g., Downs 1957), rather than the composition of parliament, descriptive representation is important only to the extent that it affects legislative behavior.3 Based on this assumption, and following in part Carnes and Lupu (2015), we argue that there are three necessary conditions that must be satisfied for descriptive representation to have an effect on legislators' policymaking actions. First, legislators must share policy preferences with the group they represent descriptively, at least for a subset of the policies on the political agenda. Such preference congruence can be the result of two mechanisms. On the one hand, people with similar background characteristics may have âshared experiences,â which in turn promote similar interests and preferences over policy (Mansbridge 1999). By merely following their personal preferences, descriptive representatives then further not only their own interests but also those of the social groups they represent. On the other hand, congruence between the preferences of representatives and citizens belonging to the same socioeconomic group may be the product of responsiveness (Achen 1978). If the former have incentives to respond to the policy preferences of the latter (for instance because of reelection concerns; see, e.g., Mayhew 1974), the represented can âinduceâ preferences in their legislators (e.g., Snyder and Ting 2005). Second, much of the literature on legislative politics assumes that multiple principals can influence the voting behavior of legislators. Most important in this regard are party discipline and constituent pressure (e.g., Levitt 1996; Burden 2007; Carey 2009). Consequently, although legislators' behavior may be constrained by party leaders and constituents who do not belong to their descriptively represented groups, for descriptive representation to be relevant these principals must not determine legislators' actions completely. In order to be able to act according to the preferences of the groups they represent descriptively, representatives must therefore have some discretion in the policy decision-making process (see also Carnes and Lupu 2015). Third, legislators who descriptively represent a particular group must be presented with choices in the policymaking process that separate them from other legislators who do not represent the same group descriptively but are otherwise similar (e.g., in terms of party affiliation). If this is not the case, it is difficult to disentangle the effect of descriptive representation from the effects of other characteristics shared by the descriptive representatives and other (similar) representatives. Provided that these three conditions are satisfied, we expect descriptive representation to matter for legislative behavior. We turn next to a discussion of our research assessing whether and to what extent socioeconomic characteristics affect legislators' attitudes and behavior in the Swiss parliament. The Swiss parliament is a militia parliament. Hence, although the compensations legislators receive for their parliamentary activity may suffice to cover the cost of living, many retain a professional activity during their parliamentary mandates. Members of the Swiss parliament are therefore likely to have relatively diverse economic conditions, not only as a result of the different professions they exercised before entering parliament and the different levels of accumulated wealth, but also because their incomes can vary substantially depending on the professional activities conducted during their mandates. An important argument put forward by proponents of the militia system is that it allows for a more diverse composition of parliament and a closer connection between legislators and their constituents. However, in practice, the militia system does not seem to enhance the descriptive representation of different social classes, as the Swiss parliament is predominantly composed of liberal professionals, entrepreneurs, and high-rank civil servants (Pilotti et al. 2010, Pilotti this debate). These two features of the Swiss parliament â diversity in legislators' income levels, combined with a significant overrepresentation of representatives coming from high-income backgrounds â make it an interesting case for analyzing the link between the descriptive and the substantive representation of economically defined groups of citizens. In this essay, we thus report on two recent studies dealing with descriptive representation and its consequences in Switzerland. The first study focuses on policy preferences among candidates in the Swiss Federal elections of 2007 (Rosset 2013a, pp. 109-133). It is based on data from the candidate survey conducted as part of âSelects,â the Swiss electoral study. For this survey, all candidates to the two chambers of the Swiss parliament have been contacted and asked to answer a paper or online questionnaire regarding their political engagement, campaign activities, policy preferences as well as their socioeconomic background. Based on these data, the study analyzes candidates' preferences with regard to redistribution, using a question asking to what extent respondents agree with the statement that the state should do more to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor. The main independent variable of interest is the candidates' monthly household income. The analysis reveals that controlling for party affiliation, gender and education, income â even though measured only crudely by seven categories â has a significant negative effect on support for redistribution. In other words, candidates from the same party are on average less favorable to redistribution of income by the state if they themselves have higher incomes. Consequently, since citizens on average have both lower incomes and policy preferences that are much more favorable towards redistribution than their representatives (Rosset 2013b), this result suggests that the unequal descriptive representation of income groups in parliament could explain the unequal representation of their preferences on redistribution. The second study focuses on legislator responsiveness. It takes advantage of Switzerland's direct democratic system, in which parliament votes on each policy proposal that is put to a popular vote (WĂŒest and Lloren 2014). This institutional setting thus provides a unique opportunity to compare legislators' and citizens' policy preferences on identical scales.4 The empirical analysis consists of two steps. First, based on data from surveys carried out after popular votes (âVoxâ surveys), the study examines whether citizens' policy preferences vary according to income. In line with previous research findings (Gilens 2009; Rigby and Wright 2011), this analysis shows that with regard to economic issues the poor tend to have more left-leaning preferences than more affluent citizens. After having shown that the preferences of poor and rich citizens differ, the study then assesses in a second step whether legislators with different socioeconomic backgrounds respond unequally to the policy preferences of different income groups. To do so, WĂŒest and Lloren (2014) regress legislators' voting decisions in parliament on three sets of independent variables: (i) indicator variables showing whether a legislator has a lower-income, middle-income or higher-income occupation (see Pilotti, Mach and Mazzoleni 2010), (ii) variables measuring the preferences of poor, middle-income and rich citizens, respectively, in a legislator's reelection constituency and (iii) a set of indicator variables to control for legislators' party affiliations.5 The analysis reveals, first, that representatives are more responsive to higher-income groups and that the preferences of the less affluent are therefore underrepresented in the legislative arena. Second, and most importantly for this essay, representatives occupying low-wage jobs are not more likely to cast a left vote than their colleagues who have middle- and higher-income occupations. Thus, conditional on party affiliation, legislators' socioeconomic backgrounds do not affect their voting decisions. Finally, the results show that legislator responsiveness to income group preferences does not depend on party affiliation. Consequently, this second study suggests that occupational income has no effect on legislators' behavior in final passage votes and that the overrepresentation of well-off representatives in parliament does not contribute to explaining the lack of congruence between legislators and lower-income citizens. At first sight, this finding contradicts a growing body of research that politicians' personal such as gender or ethnic influence their political behavior at various stages of the legislative process, thus enabling marginalized groups to voice their political concerns more accurately (Lefkofridi, Giger, and Kissau, 2012; Lloren 2015b; Preuhs 2006; Swers 2002). Some might argue that grouping legislators' according to income could be an improper measure to grasp the effect of one's position in the social structure on political decision-making (Carnes 2012; this debate; Mansbridge this debate). Accordingly, the politics of presence (Philipps 1995) postulates that personal features matter only to the extent that they generate shared social experiences, such as discrimination. Indeed, although a law student and a manual worker can be found in the same income brackets, no one would expect them to have similar social experiences or life chances, and, in turn, share a distinct set of policy preferences. However, the study carried out by Rosset (2013a) and discussed in the previous section shows that personal income determines candidates' preferences with regard to redistribution. Our findings presented above have shown that Swiss legislators' socioeconomic backgrounds are related to their attitudes towards income redistribution, yet do not seem to translate into specific patterns of voting behavior. Hence, although more research is needed to better understand the relationship between representatives' preferences and policymaking actions, we conclude this essay by offering some suggestions as to why legislators' socioeconomic characteristics do not appear to affect their behavior in parliament. As set forth in the introduction, three conditions must be satisfied for descriptive representation to have consequences for legislative behavior. Whereas the first of these conditions â that preferences of legislators are close to the preferences of the socioeconomic group they descriptively represent â is obviously satisfied, the other two are potentially violated. The second condition is violated if legislators' behavior is completely determined by party leaders and/or constituents not belonging to the groups they represent descriptively. In Switzerland, parties are decentralized organizations and legislators do not attach much importance to party loyalty as a guiding principle for their actions (Loewenberg and Mans 1988). However, this does not mean that they do not act in a cohesive manner and recent research suggests that party unity is higher on final passage votes and votes on salient issues (Traber et al. 2014). Therefore, the small influence of socioeconomic characteristics on legislators' voting behavior might be explained by the fact that their behavior is largely determined by party positions in votes on economic issues which are arguably salient. With regard to constituent pressure, we first note that given the large size of the underrepresented group of low-income citizens, legislators have a priori little electoral incentives to respond exclusively to the preferences of the more affluent. However, there is a clear class bias in political participation, which might explain why representing richer citizens could be of particular importance for reelection-seeking legislators (Rennwald 2014). Further, given the lack of party finance regulations and the low level of party subsidies in Switzerland, it may also be that politicians attach more importance to the preferences of constituents with greater financial resources they can contribute to political campaigns. Finally, the third condition for descriptive representation to matter is violated if there are no alternatives on the political agenda separating descriptive representatives from other legislators who do not represent the same group descriptively but who are otherwise similar. While coalition patterns among Swiss parties tend to differ across policy domains, recent research shows that with regard to economic issues there is a clear left-right cleavage, with center and right-wing parties favoring less welfare state than left-wing parties (Afonso and Papadopoulos 2014). Economic policies, therefore, divide legislators strongly along party lines, blurring more subtle differences in preferences that may exist among legislators with different income levels within parties (see also Mansbridge this debate). Consequently, proposals on economic issues might simply be not heterogeneous enough to allow us to disentangle the effects that socioeconomic characteristics may have on legislative behavior. This discussion also intends to serve as a cautionary note. Although in our analysis we failed to find an effect of descriptive representation on legislators' behavior, this does not imply that descriptive representation is irrelevant for policymaking. Rather, we believe that its effect is context-dependent. When the context changes (e.g., when party pressure decreases or more heterogeneous proposals are voted on in parliament), descriptive representation may become more important in structuring legislative behavior. For example, women's descriptive representation in the Swiss National Council has increased substantive representation for women (Lloren 2015a). In that case, the three conditions discussed earlier were satisfied. Women legislators are more likely to favor women friendly policy than their male colleagues and to vote together â sometimes even against their party â to support women's interests, especially on policies that yield weak left-right polarization such as moral issues. Exploring such context dependencies for other politically marginalized groups thus constitutes a fruitful avenue for future research. Finally, we should note that legislators' socioeconomic backgrounds might affect behavior other than roll call voting. For instance, some scholars have argued that legislators are less constrained by party pressure in earlier stages of the legislative process, such as when sponsoring bills or in floor debates, and therefore have more discretion to act according to the preferences of groups they represent descriptively (see, e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2015; Lupu this debate). Anouk Lloren is a postdoctoral visiting fellow at Columbia University funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Within the field of political behavior, her work relates to political participation, representation, gender, and socio-economic inequalities. Jan Rosset is a postdoctoral researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim, with a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research focuses on the relationship between economic and political inequality and on democratic political representation. Reto WĂŒest is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva. His research interests include legislative institutions and behavior, economic inequality and political representation, and formal theory.
If millionaires in the United States formed their own political party, that party would make up just three percent of the country, but it would have a majority in the House of Representatives, a filibuster-proof super-majority in the Senate, a 5:4 majority on the Supreme Court, and a man in the White House. If working-class Americansâpeople employed in manual-labor and service-industry jobsâwere a political party, that party would have made up more than half of the country since the start of the twentieth century. But legislators from that party (those who last worked in blue-collar jobs before getting into politics) would never have held more than two percent of the seats in Congress. In the last few years, scholars of US politics have started taking a renewed interest in what I call white-collar government,1 the disproportionate numerical representation of wealthy people and white-collar professionals in our political institutions. Political scientists are once again asking how government by the upper class affects public policy in the United States. And they're starting to ask why our representative process consistently gives us such economically unrepresentative slates of politicians. By virtually any measure of class or social attainment, the average policy maker in the United States is vastly better off than the average citizen. The size of the social gap between citizens and their representatives varies somewhat across different political institutions and depends in part on how we measure class or economic standing. In general, though, politicians tend to be drawn overwhelmingly from the top strata of American society. For example, members of Congressâthe branch of the federal government often touted as most closely reflecting the nation's diversityâare considerably more privileged than the people who elect them. Lawyers and business owners make up approximately 10 percent of the population but constitute at least half of both chambers. Almost every member today is a college graduate, a distinction held by just one in three Americans (Ruggles et a1. 2009). And the median net worth of members of Congress is approximately $1.5 million (Center for Responsive Politics 2014), roughly eleven times the median net worth of American families. These imbalances are by no means recent developments (e.g., Domhoff 1967; Matthews 1954a; 1954b; 1985; Mills 1956; Pessen 1984; Zeller 1954). They have persisted, moreover, even as other underrepresented groups have begun to break through the glass ceiling. Figure 1 plots the percentage of members of Congress who served between 1901 and 1996 who were women, racial or ethnic minorities, and who were from the working class (that is, who last worked as manual laborers, service industry workers, or union officials before entering politics). Although women and minorities were still underrepresented at the end of the twentieth century, both groups gained considerable ground during the postwar period. In sharp contrast, working-class Americansâwho have made up more than half of the labor force for at least the last hundred years (even after that Information Revolution of the late-20th century)âhave never held more than two percent of the seats in Congress. The Demographic Makeup of the United States Congress, 1901â96 Source: Carnes 2012. This long-standing feature of American political life doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon. Data on the makeup of state and local institutionsâwhich tend to foreshadow demographic changes in national officesâsuggest that, if anything, working-class representation may decline even further in the short term. In state legislatures, for instance, women's representation skyrocketed from 8 percent to 24 percent between 1976 and 2007, and the share of lawmakers who were Black or Latino grew from 9 percent to 11 percent. During the same period, the share of state legislators from blue-collar jobs fell from 5 percent to 3 percent (National Conference of State Legislatures 2011). The path to political office has always been difficult for the working class, and it doesn't seem to be getting any easier. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution were skeptical about the importance of a politician's economic or social class background. In Federalist #35, Alexander Hamilton defended government by the privileged (see, for instance, Lewis 1961; Manin 1997), arguing that blue-collar workers âknow that the merchant is their natural patron and friend; and they are aware that however great the confidence they may justly feel in their own good sense, their interests can be more effectually promoted by the merchant than by themselves.â Why should it matter whether the people who represent us come from one background or another? Workers and business owners both want economic prosperity, so what's the harm in letting the upper class call the shots? This rosy take on government by the privileged has been an important part of American political thought ever since. Campaigns and candidates routinely invoke âslogans such as president Calvin Coolidge's âthe business of the nation is businessâ or Charles E. Wilson's (Eisenhower's secretary of defense and a former executive at General Motors) statement that âwhat was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versaââ (Witko and Friedman 2008, 72). Unfortunately, the idea that class doesn't matter in our political institutions appears to be flat wrong. Scholars of public opinion have known for decades that Americans from different classes have different views about economic issues, that working-class Americans tend to be more progressive, and that the wealthy tend to want government to play a smaller role in economic affairs (e.g., Gilens 2009; Hout 2008; Keely and Tan 2008; Manza and Brooks 2008; Rehm 2010). Politicians seem to be no exception. Like ordinary citizens, politicians from different classes tend to have different personal views about economic issues. And because politicians often have some discretionâtheir hands aren't always tied by parties, citizens, and interest groups (Burden 2007)âthey sometimes base their choices in office on their own views about the issues before them. In Congress, for instance, legislators who had working-class jobs before being elected tend to have more progressive personal views about economic issues, tend to introduce more progressive economic proposals and work harder to pass them, and tend to cast more progressive votes on economic bills (Carnes 2012; 2013). Figure 2 plots data from the Chamber of Commerce (America's largest business association) on how frequently members of Congress sided with business interests when voting on major economic proposals. The figure divides legislators according to the main occupations they held before serving in Congress: average voting scores for members who worked in profit-oriented white-collar jobs (like owning a business) are graphed at the top, service-oriented white-collar jobs (like teaching, law, or social work) are plotted next, and working-class jobs appear at the bottom. The pattern in the data is unmistakable. Like ordinary citizens, lawmakers from the working class tend to be more pro-worker, and lawmakers from white-collar jobsâespecially profit-oriented jobs in the private sectorâtend to be more pro-business (even when I control for a wide range of constituency and legislator characteristics). Class and Roll Call Voting in Congress, 1999â2008 Source: Carnes 2013. These social class divisions are remarkably consistent across different datasets. They appear in voting scores computed by other organizations, in data from different periods of American history, in data on other forms of legislative conduct like introducing bills, and in surveys of state and federal legislators' personal beliefs (Carnes 2013). They are also mirrored in other studies that use different measures of class and privilege. Members of Congress from specific white-collar occupations like business (Witko and Friedman 2008) and law (Eulau and Sprauge 1964; Miller 1995) tend to vote differently on legislation that affects their industries. Legislators who have more money invested in stocks are more likely to vote to protect the markets (Grose 2013). Wealthier legislators are more likely to vote against the estate tax (Griffin and Anewalt-Remsburg 2013). Legislators with more wealth and education are more likely to support bills that increase economic inequality (Kraus and Callaghan 2014). However we define class or privilege, it seems to matter in our legislatures. Like ordinary citizens, lawmakers who are well off themselves are more likely to support policies that protect the well off. And these class-based differences in individual legislative conduct can have dramatic consequences in the aggregate. Figure 3 plots data from 1993 and 1995 on the social class makeups of state legislatures against data on the percentages of states' budgets devoted to social welfare programs (top panel), the generosity of unemployment benefits in each state (middle panel), and the tax rate on corporations in each state (bottom panel). State legislatures with more working-class members devote more of their resources to social safety net programs and tax corporations at higher rates. States with more business owners and executives in their legislatures spend less on welfare, provide lower levels of unemployment benefits, and tax companies at lower rates (Carnes 2013, ch. 5). Economic Policy and the Social Class Makeup of State Legislatures, 1994â1996 Source: Carnes 2013, ch. 5. Note: Lines represent quadratic best-fit estimates (with 95 percent confidence intervals shaded gray). Welfare spending and corporate tax rate data are from 1994 and 1996; maximum weekly unemployment benefits data are from 2001. Of course, many other features of US politics mute our government's response to the needs of the working class, like the decline of labor unions and the recent and unprecedented surge in campaign spending (see Gilens in this debate). White-collar government isn't the only barrier to pro-worker policy in the United Statesâbut it certainly belongs on the list.2 The rosy notion that lawmakers from business and professional backgrounds want what's best for everyone is seriously out of line with the realities of legislative decision making in the United States. The economic issues at stake in American politics often involve difficult trade-offs between the material well-being of different classes of citizens. And the scarcity of lawmakers from the working class ultimately tilts decisions about the distribution of economic resources, protections, and burdens in favor of the more conservative policies that affluent Americans tend to prefer. Government by the upper class promotes government for the upper classâand government for the upper class is often bad for everyone else. Why, then, are there so few working-class people in our political institutions in the first place? If the policy stakes are so high, why does our representative process consistently yield such an unrepresentative group of decision makers? Political scientists currently know more about the effects of government by the privileged in the United States than they do about the causes. However, a growing body of research seems to be ruling out several potential culpritsâand implicating others. Probably the most common view among pundits and political observers is that white-collar government is something of a practical necessity in the United States. One popular version of this argument holds that government by the privileged is what Americans want, that white-collar professional rule in the U.S. because American voters prefer white-collar candidates. Another common and related view is that government by the upper class is what Americans need, that working-class people don't have the skills or qualifications required for holding office. The Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist William A. Henry III (1995, 21) summarized both when he wrote that âvoters repeatedly reject insurrectionist candidates who parallel their own ordinariness [âŠ] in favor of candidates of proven character and competence.â Why are we governed by the rich? Many observers believe it's because the rich make better politiciansâand voters know it. These arguments have deep historical roots in the United States. However, they've never found much support in hard data on U.S. politics. There has never been an empirical study that has shown that American voters prefer white-collar candidates. And there has never been a single studyânot oneâthat has concluded that working-class people are underrepresented in public office because they are less qualified for the job. On average, members of Congress from the working class do almost exactly as well in elections as members from white-collar professions (Carnes n.d.). Experiments comparing hypothetical candidates from different classes reach identical conclusions. Sadin (2011) finds, for instance, that voters randomly assigned to evaluate a hypothetical candidate from the working class are just as likely to report that they would vote for him as those randomly assigned to evaluate an otherwise identical hypothetical candidate from an elite professional background. Far from âreject[ing] ⊠candidate[s] who parallel their own ordinariness,â voters seem to like working-class candidates just fine. A shortage of qualified workers doesn't seem to be to blame, either. It's true that on average working-class Americans are less likely to have many of the personal qualities that promote success in politics or that we might want in our leaders: knowledge about public affairs, confidence that the political process can be used to achieve real change, âtoleran[ce] of unpopular voicesâ (Verba 2003, 669), and so on. However, there are many more working-class people than there are white-collar professionalsâso many more, in fact, that there are actually more blue-collar workers with many of these desirable characteristics than there are white-collar professionals (Carnes 2013, ch. 6). If even just half a percent of the blue-collar workers in the United States have the skills required for holding office, there would be enough of them to fill every seat in Congress and in every state legislature more than 40 timesâwith enough left over to run a few thousand city councils. Something other than voters and qualifications seems to be responsible for the shortage of working-class citizens in American political institutions. Scholars haven't yet confirmed exactly what that is, but we're starting to make some headway. Building on research on other historically underrepresented groups like women (e.g., Crowder-Meyer 2010; Lawless and Fox 2005; 2010; Sanbonmatsu 2002; 2006), the nascent scholarship on the shortage of working-class Americans in public office is beginning to find evidence that workers are underrepresented not because of some deficiency on their part, but because of discouraging circumstances, like the practical burdens associated with holding office and the gatekeeping decisions of party leaders and interest groups. In places where holding office is less burdensome and in places where workers are better integrated into parties and interest groups, workers tend to hold office in larger numbers. Figure 4 illustrates this point with data on the share of working-class Americans in state legislatures (from Figure 3). In states with more professionalized legislaturesâthat is, where holding office takes more time and energyâfewer workers hold office. In states where working-class citizens make up larger shares of party and campaign volunteers, workers tend to hold office in larger numbers. And in states where unions are stronger, workers are more likely to lead (Carnes n.d.; see also Carnes forthcoming; Sojourner 2013). The factors that keep workers out of office don't seem to have to do with voters or with the supposed shortcomings of the working class itself. They seem to have far more to do with the structural features of the political landscape that have captivated scholars of U.S. politics for decades: parties, institutions, and interest groups. What Predicts Working-class Representation in State Legislatures? Source: Carnes n.d. These findings are still preliminary, of courseâthere simply hasn't been much research on this topic yet. Scholars still need to develop a complete account of the individual behavioral or psychological factors keeping workers from running and winning (e.g., differences in resources, ambition, recruitment, etc.). We need to link those factors to the structural features of the political environment that give rise to them, like the high cost of running an election, the weakness of labor unions in the US, and so on. We need to think through and identify the causal relationship between these factors and working-class representation. And we need to think about change over time. Many of these structural factors are changing in ways that probably discourage working-class office holdingâelections are getting more expensive and unions are getting weaker. Holding office was always challenging for workers (see Figure 1), but it may be getting even harder. Scholars need to understand how these changes are affecting the already difficult process of transitioning from a working-class job to a career in politics. Reformers do, too. In the last few years, activists have started taking an unprecedented interest in government by the privileged. In the 1990s, the New Jersey AFL-CIO launched a âcandidate schoolâ to identify, recruit, and train working-class citizens to run for public office. Since then, similar working-class candidate training programs have been launched in California, Connecticut, Maine, Nevada, New York, and Oregonâand more are on the way (Carnes 2013, ch. 6). Programs like these are premised on the same basic ideas that are emerging from the scholarly research on the factors keeping working-class Americans out of office, namely, that there are many qualified working-class Americans out there, that workers do well in elections when they run, and that electing more workers will tilt economic policy toward the progressive policies that workers tend to support and away from the conservative policies favored by America's rich. However, scholars and practitioners still have a lot to learn about why the United States has a white-collar governmentâand what we can do about it. Nicholas Carnes is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. His research focuses on U.S. politics, legislative decision making, representation, social class, economic inequality, and state and local politics. His new book White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making examines how the shortage of people from the working class in American legislatures skews the policymaking process towards outcomes that are more in line with the upper class's economic interests. He is also starting a large-scale study on the factors that discourage working-class Americans from holding public office and the programs that could help to address the shortage of working-class Americans in our political institutions.
Meaningfully automating sociotechnical business collaboration promises efficiency-, effectiveness-, and quality increases for realizing next-generation decentralized autonomous organizations. For automating business-process aware cross-organizational operations, the development of existing choreography languages is technology driven and focuses less on sociotechnical suitability and expressiveness concepts and properties that recognize the interaction between people in organizations and technology in workplaces. This gap our suitability- and expressiveness exploration fills by means of a cross-organizational collaboration ontology that we map as a proof-of-concept evaluation to the eSourcing Markup Language (eSML). The latter we test in a feasibility case study to meaningfully support the automation of business collaboration. The developed eSourcing ontology and eSML is replicable for exploring strengths and weaknesses of other choreography languages.
Abstract. The Contribution of Islamic Banking on the Banten Economy. The development of Islamic banking in Banten can be seen from the four aspects, such as amount of assets, DPK, financing and credit risks. Even indicates the good growth, but the performance of Islamic banking from the total banking in Banten region is still relatively small. Until the fourth quarter of 2013, the share of Islamic banking assets in Banten only reached 6.78 percent of total banking assets in the province of Banten. Likewise, the share of Islamic banking on third party funds amounted only 5.20 percent. While the financing extended by the Islamic banking in Banten province amounted only 7.61 percent of total bank credit in Banten Province. This research was conducted with a view to determine the contribution of Islamic banking to increase PDRB Banten Province. This research uses 60 samples, including monthly data from January 2009 until December 2013 consisted of PDRB Banten, DPK and financing Islamic banking in Banten. The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression with the help of software eviews. The results showed that the DPK data processing and financing not partial effect on PDRB increase in Banten. However DPK and financing jointly/ simultaneous effect on PDRB Banten. Figures determination coefficient of 53% shows the value of the contribution of Islamic banking and finance sector generally, to the economic progress of Banten. The remaining 47% was contributed by other sectors that are not included in this study. The high contribution of Islamic banking to Bantenâs economy must be supported by the preparation of adequate infrastructure, especially concerned to improve the quality and quantity of human resources in the Islamic economics and finance area. Beside that, we must give the encouragement to the government of Banten in order to increase the proportion of decentralized funds placement in Islamic financial institutions.Abstrak. Kontribusi Perbankan Syariah Terhadap Perekonomian Banten. Perkembangan perbankan syariah di Banten dapat dilihat dari empat aspek, yaitu jumlah aset, DPK, pembiayaan dan resiko kredit. Meski terus menunjukkan perkembangan yang baik, namun kinerja perbankan syariah terhadap total perbankan di wilayah Banten masih relatif kecil. Sampai triwulan IV 2013, pangsa aset perbankan syariah di Banten baru mencapai 6,78 persen dari total aset perbankan di wilayah Provinsi Banten. Demikian juga dengan pangsa penghimpunan DPK perbankan syariah hanya sebesar 5,20 persen. Sementara itu pembiayaan yang disalurkan oleh perbankan syariah di Provinsi Banten hanya sebesar 7,61 persen dari total kredit perbankan di Provinsi Banten. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan maksud untuk mengetahui kontribusi perbankan syariah terhadap peningkatan PDRB Provinsi Banten. Riset ini menggunakan 60 sampel, meliputi data bulanan sejak Januari 2009 sampai Desember 2013 terdiri dari PDRB Banten, DPK dan pembiayaan perbankan syariah di Banten. Teknik analisis data menggunakan regresi linier berganda dengan bantuan software eviews. Hasil pengolahan data menunjukkan bahwa DPK dan pembiayaan tidak berpengaruh secara parsial terhadap peningkatan PDRB Banten. Namun DPK dan pembiayaan secara bersama-sama/ simultan berpengaruh terhadap PDRB Banten. Angka koefisien determinasi sebesar 53% menunjukkan nilai kontribusi perbankan syariah, dan umumnya sektor keuangan, terhadap kemajuan perekonomian Banten. Sisanya 47% disumbangkan oleh sektor lain yang tidak dimasukkan dalam penelitian ini. Tingginya kontribusi perbankan syariah terhadap perekonomian Banten harus direspon dengan penyiapan infrastruktur yang memadai, terutama berkaitan dengan peningkatan kualitas dan kuantitas sumber daya manusia yang menguasai bidang ekonomi dan keuangan Islam. Diperlukan juga dorongan untuk Pemprov Banten agar meningkatkan proporsi penempatan dana desentralisasi di lembaga keuangan syariah.
Mobile Ad hoc network (MANET) is an autonomous system of mobile hosts (nodes) connected by wireless link forming a temporary network without the aid of any established infrastructure or centralized administration. Typical applications of MANETs are: emergency and rescue operations, disaster relief efforts, military operations and exploration mission where cellular infrastructure is unavailable. The main problem of mobile ad hoc networks is to design routing protocols allowing for communication between the hosts. The dynamic nature of ad hoc networks makes this problem especially challenging. Communication in MANET is multi-hop due to limited transmission range; this decentralized operation relies on the cooperative participations of all nodes. MANETs are considered as complex system characterized by high dynamic topology, local interactions, auto-organization and emergence. Modeling and simulation are very important in the design and development of distributed interacting system because of their particular stochastic nature. This article seeks to use agent-based tools for modeling ad hoc network. We focus on Netlogo, an important tool in the modeling and simulation domain of complex system. We have successfully implemented distributed Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm to solve the routing problem. Obtained Results show the quick convergence of Dijkstra's Algorithm to shortest paths relating a source node with all accessible destinations.
<p>Intrapreneurship is considered to be the most suitable mechanism for the efficient management to provide innovation activity and high competitiveness of large companies. This article researches the mechanism of decentralization of large state-owned companies in economically-developed countries as well it provides scientific foundations of the necessity of transition to the intrapreneurship mechanism which includes principles of internal entrepreneurship. In addition, it studies economic results of financing process implemented while operating innovation projects on the example of large companies of Uzbekistan. We have analyzed NPV, IRR, PbP, sensitivity to main risks, difference between scenarios both with project realization and without project realization in oil and gas, energy and mining industries. Moreover, recommendations aimed at successful implementation of intrapreneurship in practice have been developed and possible ways to finance established intercompany entrepreneurship units have been proposed.</p>