The 20th century has been called the era of centralized authoritarian rule.On the other hand, the 21st century is known as the era of devolution.In this lecture, I will first explain the reasons why a decentralized society, that is, devolution, has become necessary.Second, I will give a general outline on the OECD system of fiscal relations across government levels.Third, I will examine the present state of the reform for decentralization that has been undertaken in Japan in recent years, and fourth, I will investigate the situation of local government finance in the age of devolution in reference to the principles of the European Charter of Local Self-Government.
It is thought that the corporations bear excessive debt in 1980s, leading to the bubble, and it burst in 1990s. An example of the proof is the bad debt problem of the banking sector. If the amount of debt was excessive, a corporation should have excessive assets, and which would impair its profitability, ie, impaired efficient use of capital employed. The issue has been studied from many aspects such as macro economic condition, character of the financial markets, etc. Also, there have been many researches on cost of capital with respect to corporate governance. Yonezawa and Matsuura (2000) said retained earnings had not been efficiently used in the light of dividend policy. Miyagawa, Arikawa and Saito (2001) said free cash flows had been used for low return projects in the comparative study on the oil shock and the bubble period. On the other hand, Fukushima (2003) said as far as ex-post returns were concerned, they sufficed to the expectation of investors. Takemi (2005) suggested it was wrong to say that 1990s was the only period to see the impaired profitability and its tendency could date back to 1970s. And as a whole industry, the increase in labor costs had surpassed the increase in productivity. From the view of stake holders, equity holders had aided employees financially for a long period of time. Miyanaga (2002), whose attention was to labor costs, has the same conclusion. Analysis tool of this paper is return on capital employed. The reason is as follows; it is a hybrid measure of assets turn-over, relating to cost of capital, and operating profit ratio to sales, relating to expense control on labor costs. And it leads to present the strategic character of Japanese corporations.
Ulrike Neumann, Anja Hagen, Matthias P. Schönermark
Because great interest in an efficient range of effective medicinal innovations and achievements has arisen, many countries have introduced procedures to regulate the adoption of innovative non-medicinal technologies into the benefit catalogue of solidly financed health care insurances. With this as a background, this report will describe procedures for the adoption of innovative non-medicinal technologies by solidly financed health care insurances in Germany, England, Australia and Switzerland. This report was commissioned by the German Agency for Health Technology Assessment at the German Institute for Medical Documentation and Information.In order to find the relevant literature and information, systematic literature research, a hand search and a written survey were carried out. All the selected documents (chosen according to defined criteria for inclusion and exclusion) were qualitatively evaluated, summarized and presented on a chart using a framework developed for this purpose. All the countries in this report require that some innovative non-medicinal technologies undergo evaluation by a central governing body. This evaluation is a prerequisite for adoption into the benefit catalogue. The process of evaluation can differ (e. g. the people and institutions concerned, the division of the synthesis of evidence and overall evaluation, processing the evidence). Similarities do exist, such as the size and composition of the governing bodies or the overreaching criteria according to which institutions must make their recommendations. This is how all the countries examined in this report determine how the benefits and effectiveness of the innovations, as well as their cost-effectiveness, can be chosen as criteria for the evaluation. Furthermore, there are many criteria which differ from country to country (social and ethical aspects, possible effects on the health system, etc.) and which are also relevant to an evaluation. The preferred types of clinical studies for these evaluations are randomized controlled trials. However, all institutions do allow for other types of evidence (e. g. expert opinion) when no other study types of a higher evidence level are available. In addition, all the countries are willing to allow unpublished or confidential information (e. g. from manufacturers) to be included in an evaluation. It is important to remember that the decisions made by the central governing bodies do not necessarily become conditions for the introduction of innovative non-medicinal technologies. There is a host of other requirements which determine how these innovations can be introduced. This means that a large number of non-medicinal technologies make it into the medical care system via these other decision-making processes. Often, these innovations are unevaluated and differ from region to region. Every country has established a system of observation and registration for medicinal products. These systems are meant to document any incidents with the innovations and to confer responsibility on certain organizations. All in all, no country has a central authority which systematically investigates the effects of newly introduced innovative non-medicinal technologies on medical care in general. However, Australia and England both carry out a review of innovations in some areas (e. g. by means of special commissions). In principle, the starting point for improving regulations of innovative non-medicinal technologies lies in the extension of transparency, the shortening of decision-making time (especially the central decision-making processes), the further development of evaluation methods, more flexibility and increased capacity in the governing bodies' decision-making processes and also, if needed, in the creation of a single authority to act as contact for people who are interested in introducing an innovation into the benefit catalogue.More research is required, especially in the area of decentralized decision-makers and how they actually decide whether or not to introduce innovative technologies into the core care system (methods, criteria, etc.). In view of this, it would also be interesting to see how the application of innovations actually happens in practice once their adoption has been approved by the corresponding governing bodies.
Open access
Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
Η διατριβή αυτή ασχολείται με την προδιαγραφή και υλοποίηση πρωτοκόλλων ασφάλειας με απαιτήσεις διασφάλισης ιδιωτικότητας, όπως για παράδειγμα τα πρωτόκολλα ηλεκτρονικών μετρητών, ηλεκτρονικής ψηφοφορίας και επιλεκτικής αποκάλυψης δεδομένων. Ο στόχος, όσον αφορά την προδιαγραφή τους, είναι αυτή να γίνει με τυπική μέθοδο (formal method), και, όσον αφορά την υλοποίησή τους, να βασίζεται στην προδιαγραφή τους και να διασφαλίζει τις περί ιδιωτικότητας απαιτήσεις. Το υπάρχον ερευνητικό έργο στη διεθνή βιβλιογραφία σε τυπικές μεθόδους δεν καλύπτει επαρκώς τα πρωτόκολλα ασφάλειας με απαιτήσεις διασφάλισης ιδιωτικότητας όσο άλλων ειδών πρωτόκολλα ασφάλειας, όπως τα πρωτόκολλα αυθεντικοποίησης. Στην παρούσα διατριβή υποστηρίζεται ότι οι λόγοι για αυτή την ανεπάρκεια μελέτης είναι οι εξής: Πρώτον, ότι τα πρωτόκολλα με απαιτήσεις διασφάλισης ιδιωτικότητας βασίζονται σε πιο εξειδικευμένη κρυπτογραφία, όπως η δέσμευση (commitment), η τυφλή υπογραφή (blind signature), η απόδειξη μηδενικής γνώσης (zero-knowledge proof), η ομομορφική κρυπτογραφία (homomorphic encryption), το mix του Chaum και το onion routing. Δεύτερον, ότι είναι απαραίτητη η διαφοροποίηση στη μοντελοποίηση της κλασικής κρυπτογραφίας (συμμετρική και ασύμμετρη κρυπτογράφηση και ψηφιακές υπογραφές) που τα πρωτόκολλα αυτά χρησιμοποιούν από κοινού με τα υπόλοιπα πρωτόκολλα. Η διατριβή αυτή χρησιμοποιεί ως βάση τη γλώσσα προδιαγραφής πρωτοκόλλων Typed MSR [14, 15], καθώς και την προηγούμενη εργασία μας στην ίδια [10, 7, 9, 8, 6] ερευνητική κατεύθυνση και στοχεύει με τροποποιήσεις και προσθήκες να την μετατρέψει σε κατάλληλη, αφενός για την προδιαγραφή πρωτοκόλλων με απαιτήσεις διασφάλισης ιδιωτικότητας, αφετέρου για την προδιαγραφή ενός κατά Dolev-Yao επιτιθέμενου [19] σχεδιασμένου για επίθεση σε πρωτόκολλα τέτοιου είδους. Επιπλέον, χρησιμοποιεί ως βάση τη γλώσσα Jif [30, 31, 29], καθώς και την προηγούμενη εργασία μας [6] στην ίδια ερευνητική κατεύθυνση και στοχεύει να επιδείξει πως η γλώσσα αυτή, που διαθέτει σύστημα τύπων για απαιτήσεις ασφάλειας, μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί με τέτοιον τρόπο ώστε οι αδυναμίες στην υλοποίηση πρωτοκόλλων ασφαλείας όσον αφορά τη συνδεσιμότητα (linkability) να μπορούν να ανιχνευτούν με ένα συνδυασμό στατικών και δυναμικών (runtime) ελέγχων. Τα βασικά συμπεράσματα της διατριβής αυτής είναι τα ακόλουθα: 1. Προκειμένου η Typed MSR να είναι κατάλληλη για την προδιαγραφή πρωτοκόλλων ασφάλειας με απαιτήσεις ιδιωτικότητας, δεν θα πρέπει να μοντελοποιεί τη συμμετρική και την ασύμμετρη κρυπτογράφηση ως αιτιοκρατική. Μια τέτοια απλούστευση μπορεί να μη δημιουργεί προβλήματα στη μοντελοποίηση άλλων πρωτοκόλλων, αλλά οδηγεί σε ανύπαρκτες αδυναμίες διασύνδεσης στα πρωτόκολλα που μελετούμε στην παρούσα διατριβή. 2. Μπορούμε να κατασκευάσουμε υψηλού επιπέδου μοντελοποιήσεις για κρυπτογραφία πιο σύνθετη από την κλασική, όπως είναι η δέσμευση, η τυφλή υπογραφή, η απόδειξη μηδενικής γνώσης και η ομομορφική κρυπτογραφία. 3. Η χρήση μη διαδραστικών μοντελοποιήσεων για τις αποδείξεις μηδενικής γνώσης οδηγεί στην απλοποίηση τόσο της προδιαγραφής των πρωτοκόλλων, όσο και της μετατροπής αυτής σε υλοποίησή τους. 4. Με βάση τις προαναφερθείσες αλλαγές και προσθήκες, η Typed MSR γίνεται κατάλληλη για την προδιαγραφή πρωτοκόλλων ασφάλειας με απαιτήσεις ιδιωτικότητας, όπως δείχνει η προδιαγραφή των δύο πρωτοκόλλων ηλεκτρονικής ψηφοφορίας που περιέχονται στην παρούσα διατριβή. 5. Ένα απλό σύστημα τύπων, που χρησιμοποιείται παράλληλα με το σύστημα τύπων της Typed MSR, αποτρέπει συγκεκριμένες εσφαλμένες χρήσεις της κρυπτογραφίας που μπορεί να οδηγήσουν σε αδυναμίες συνδεσιμότητας, καθώς και να παρακολουθήσει την απειλή συνδεσιμότητας που προκύπτει από κάθε πιθανή χρήση της κρυπτογραφίας. 6. Είναι απαραίτητη η ενημέρωση του εκφρασμένου σε Typed MSR μοντέλου του κατά Dolev-Yao επιτιθέμενου με βάση τα παραπάνω, ώστε να μπορεί πλέον να επιτεθεί στα πρωτόκολλα τα οποία μελετάμε. 7. Η ενημερωμένη αυτή έκδοση του κατά Dolev-Yao επιτιθέμενου δημιουργεί ένα τυπικό (formal) περιβάλλον, στο οποίο μπορούν να εκφραστούν αδυναμίες διασύνδεσης των πρωτοκόλλων. 8. Τα παραπάνω μπορούν να αποτελέσουν τη βάση για τη χρήση της γλώσσας Jif με τέτοιο τρόπο, ώστε οι αδυναμίες στην υλοποίηση πρωτοκόλλων ασφαλείας όσον αφορά τη συνδεσιμότητα να μπορούν να ανιχνευτούν με ένα συνδυασμό στατικών και δυναμικών ελέγχων. 9. Η συνδεσιμότητα δεν είναι δυνατό να ελεγχθεί στατικά στη γενική περίπτωση, αλλά μπορεί να ελέγχεται δυναμικά κατά την εκτέλεση των πρωτοκόλλων. 10. Οι κανόνες της Typed MSR με τους οποίους παράγονται τα καινούρια μηνύματα τα οποία μπορεί να σχηματίσει ο κατά Dolev-Yao επιτιθέμενος από ένα σύνολο γνωστών μηνυμάτων χωρίζονται σε δύο κατηγορίες, ανάλογα με το αν χρησιμοποιούνται στη φάση αποδόμησης των γνωστών μηνυμάτων ή στη φάση κατασκευής των καινούριων. Συγκεκριμένα μηνύματα που βασίζονται στην κρυπτογραφία της διατριβής αυτής δεν μπορούν όμως να χωριστούν σε μία από τις δύο κατηγορίες, καθώς είναι ωφέλιμη η χρήση τους και στις δύο αυτές φάσεις.
Zero-knowledge proof system is an important protocol that can be used as a basic block for construction of other more complex cryptographic protocols. Quantum zero-knowledge protocols have been proposed but, since their implementation requires advanced quantum technology devices, experimental implementation of zero-knowledge protocols have not being reported. In this work, we present a quantum zero-knowledge protocol based on a quantum bit commitment protocol that can be implemented with today technology. Hence, our quantum zero-knowledge protocol can be readily implemented.
The paper tries to shed some light on the problems of centralization and decentralization within an economic union and the federal member states. Integration and decentralization are not opposite policy strategies but both meaningful if the single public goods and services supplies are analyzed in more detail. Both strategies doubtlessly have advantages, which can be realized if the manifold possibilities are combined in an efficient approach of good governance. Best practice approaches in inter- or supra-national integration, fiscal federalism and taxation do exist and have to be successfully implemented. Obviously such a modern fiscal policy has to be accompanied by an appropriate monetary policy, which in an economic union has to be carried out by an independent central bank as one of the necessary countervailing powers in a democratic setting. A modern fiscal policy strategy efficiently controls budget deficits, which naturally have to be limited to finance reliable public investments. Such strategy has to be safeguarded through modern methods of budgeting and fiscal planning. Modern public management with a clear code of conduct for the government officials ensures corruption free administration.
Observation of the first and second generation of literature on fiscal decentralization together with further branches of political economy, e.g. specifically on the political economy of intergovernmental grants and the widening literature on political business cycles leads to a puzzle: decentralization is a continuing policy trend however in reality there are downsides, institutional, political and other factors that do interfere with decision-making and can increase the chances for inefficient policy outcomes. Infrastructure investment finances at all levels of government are especially prone to election cycles and corruption. Driven from the above context the basic research question guiding my work is: whether local infrastructure policies in Hungary are really designed according to efficiency considerations? What politico-economic factors might affect central and local governments’ allocations on infrastructure investment? To complete this goal, a closer look at municipal capital investment financing in Hungary takes place. Related to the main research question several themes emerge and hypotheses are checked on the effects of the revenue base, local need and socioeconomic indicators on local investment strategies and financing constructions or grant allocations. Does grant financing mean a less careful financial planning? What is the importance of lobbying through different channels? I also search for - and in fact do find evidence of electoral cycle effects and partisan considerations (effect of similarities in political color of central and local governments) in intergovernmental grant distribution and in municipal investment activities. These issues to be researched call for a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. Some of my hypothesis are tested on limited data from a 2004 survey of city mayors in Hungary. Hypotheses on cycles, determinants of investment outlays of local governments and grant recipiency are tested with linear and Probit panel regressions respectively on a panel dataset comprehensive for all Hungarian local government budgets from 1993-2003, a period bridging three election cycles, linked with some demographic,socioeconomic data and local election data. Findings can add to the discussion on reforming local government finance system overall, on the agenda in Hungary for quite a while, but perhaps also to the new literature on the political economy of failures, delays in socially beneficial reforms. What this dissertation certainly does contribute to is the fairly small pool of international empirical evidences available on political budget cycles, especially at the sub-national level and the emerging literature on the political economy of intergovernmental grants providing the case of one transition country that irrespective of the fact of by now being an EU member sometimes shows certain similarities to the developing ones.
Open access
Local Government Finance and Decentralization
Regional Development and Policy
Hungarian Social, Economic and Educational Studies
ABSTRACT\nPrioritizing public tramjport in large cities requires huge amount of money.\nIn Kuala Lumpur for example, public transport services are relatively poor and inefficient due in part to the inability by the major operators to mobilize ample investment capital. Besides, the new funding systems such as the Public Transportation Trust Fund (PTTF) may not be able to solve the problem because they are still unclear and incoherent. Other key challenges are: lack of a pro-transit policy. rapid motorization. urban decentralization as well as dependence on fare\nrevenue and banks to fund new investments. CrucianF. due to the poor design of private rail concessions, government intervention has been inevitable.\n\nKeywords: large cities, public transit, Kuala Lumpur, funding
The Czech Republic and Slovakia, like other transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe, have given significant lip service to fiscal decentralization and engaged in public administration reforms. But the subnational governments of their public finance systems still lack relative autonomy, which could be addressed partly through developing independent revenue sources for their municipalities and regions. Currently, such independent revenue sources include the proceeds of a strictly nominal property tax as well as those of a small set of local user fees and taxes designed and approved by the central governments. Together they represent only about 5 percent of total municipal budget revenues.
The thesis deals with problems facing municipal financing in Azerbaijan. Following the exploration of the options for a better design of local government financing.
ABSTRACT\nA students’ Loan scheme is one among many alternatives for financing higher education in various countries around the world. Tanzania is one of the countries that have been practicing loan scheme system for financing higher education sub-sector. The purpose of this study is to examine the performance of the students’ loan scheme in Tanzania basing on the views of the stakeholders, mostly higher education students who are the main beneficiaries of the scheme.\n\nSome university students at the University of Dar es Salaam, the policy makers and policy implementers in the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology and the Higher Education Student Loan Board respectively, were identified for the study. The study was guided by two research questions. These are: what is the performance of higher education student loan scheme in terms of the procedures for loan application and money disbursement; and does the student loan scheme contain the structures for loan recovery to the extent of being able to recover the loan?\n\nA qualitative strategy has been used in this study. Multiple methods were used for data collection, namely semi-structured interview, group discussion and documentary analysis. Twelve students of different academic years of study and student leaders at the student organization level, two policy makers and two policy implementers were interviewed. Twenty students were involved in a focused group discussion. And various documents including policy documents, guidelines and website documents were analyzed. Data collected was analyzed by induction process.\n\nThe findings show that the loan scheme in Tanzania is partly not performing well in terms of application procedures, disbursement of funds to students and loan recovery. Therefore to make the loan scheme perform at the convenience of the stakeholders, it is recommended that the government should decentralize the HESLB to district level (establish the district offices). By doing so some services such as distribution and collection of loan application forms and means-testing can be done at the district offices. In addition, it is recommended that the loan application forms can also be stationed at Advanced Secondary Schools to make it easy for the applicants to access them as most of the applicants are students from these schools.
Viktória Vásáry, Andrea Elekes, Péter Halmai, Vasary, Viktoria · 6 authors
Can we agree fully with the statement, that “agricultural spending is a major distorting factor in the EU economy and a distinct obstacle to the Lisbon agenda’s implementation”? (Gros, 2008) Is it without question that Europe’s agriculture is in position to become sustainable and competitive without certain kind of common policy with no Community financing? Is it unambiguous in every respect, that the challenges facing the sector – globalization, trade liberalization, climate change, water management, Lisbon process, enlargement, changing preferences – could be answered at national level utilizing exclusively national financial sources? The answers to these questions are complex. So the purpose of the paper is multiple: - Exploration of factors justifying community level intervention. – Could be applied the bottom line of the “decentralization theorem” to budgetary questions and needs of the agricultural policy? According to our hypothesis the answer is considered yes. - Assessing present CAP - taking into account its ability to provide EU wide public goods (multifunctional elements serve in deed significant cross-border externalities) and to create EU value added. - Making an attempt to redefine EU’s agricultural policy through exploring objectives having a greater impact by being implemented at the supranational level and not at other secondary decision levels. – Making an attempt to outline a Common Rural Policy, a policy promoting the provision of public goods required by the society by means of targeted and decoupled economic policy measures. In order to attain the objectives of the paper we apply the theory of fiscal federalism, make analysis on EU public finances in a broader context.
This thesis is concerned with stochastic perturbation theory of the symmetric eigen-value problem. In particular, we provide results about the probability of interchanges in the ordering of the eigenvalues and changes in the eigenvectors of symmetric matrices subject to stochastic perturbations. In this analysis we use a novel combination of traditional Numerical Linear Algebra, Perturbation Theory and Probability Theory. The motivation for this study arises from reliability of spectral clustering of networks, when network data is subject to noise. As far as we are aware, there is nothing comparable in the literature. Further, we make conjectures from which we derive an asymptotic relation between the distributions of the largest eigenvalue and the 2-norm of random symmetric ma- trices, whose entries above the main diagonal are independent, identically distributed random variables with probability density functions being symmetric with respect to zero, including matrices from the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE). As far as we know, some of these conjectures are not new (possibly only as conjectures) but we are not aware of any proofs. Also, we consider networks of coupled oscillators. In their analysis we use both, knowledge of dynamical systems and spectral properties of non-negative matrices. As a result, we present an algorithm, which uncovers the \\master-slave" structure of the network. With its help, the analysis of the dynamics and the entrainment of the entire network can be reduced to considering only few of the oscillators, those whose dynamics determine the behaviour of the rest. This can be helpful in large networks exhibiting the \\master-slave" structure. Finally, we consider similarities of spectral clustering with respect to di®erent matrices which can be associated with a given network. In particular, we compare clustering of products of Path graphs with respect to two di®erent matrices: the Laplacian and the Normalised Laplacian matrices of the graph. We make the comparison by constructing a Homotopy between two eigenvalue problems and, using some Linear Algebra techniques, we show that the two matrices give similar spectral clusterings when applied to products of Path graphs.
Public-key cryptography is a key technology for making the Internet and other IT infrastructures secure. The security of the established public-key cryptosystems relies on the difficulty of factoring large composite integers or computing discrete logarithms. However, it is unclear whether these computational problems remain intractable in the future. For example, Shor showed in 1994 that quantum computers can be used to factor integers and to compute discrete logarithms in polynomial time. It is therefore necessary to develop alternative public-key cryptosystems which do not rely on the difficulty of factoring or computing discrete logarithms and which are secure even against quantum computer attacks. We call such cryptosystems quantum-immune. To prove the security of these quantum-immune cryptosystems, appropriate security models have to be used. Since quantum computers are able to solve problems in polynomial time which are supposed to be intractable for classical computers, the existing security models are inadequate in the presence of quantum adversaries. Therefore, new security models have to be developed to capture quantum adversaries. Properties of these new security models have to be investigated. On a more practical level, the quantum-immune cryptosystems have to be implemented in a way that they can seamlessly replace established cryptosystems. The implementations have to be efficient and suitable for resource-constrained devices. They must easily integrate into existing public-key infrastructures. This thesis contributes to both the theory and practice of quantum-immune cryptography, addressing the above-mentioned challenges. In the theoretical part, we concentrate on the quantum zero-knowledge property of interactive proof systems. We show for the first time that the quantum statistical, perfect, and computational zero-knowledge properties are preserved under sequential composition of interactive proof systems. In the practical part, we provide implementations of the most important quantum-immune cryptosystems. We present efficiency improvements of some of the alternative cryptosystems. The implementations are very efficient and easily integrate into existing public-key infrastructures. We present comprehensive timings that show that the alternative cryptosystems are competitive or even superior compared to established cryptosystems. Finally, we present a new cryptographic API that is particularly well-suited for resource-constrained devices like mobile phones and PDAs. With this API, the alternative cryptosystems can also be used with these devices.
Microfinance opportunities have been successfully expanding in Ethiopia during the past fifteen years, including in remote villages, where the majority of people are engaged in smallscale agriculture, which is little supported by modern technology. Some of the key strategies for the success include: innovative adaptation of the group guarantee lending model, successfully customized to local Ethiopian realities; decentralization of operation, including a focus on using indigenous knowledge and resources in client screening and follow-up; appropriate strategies to deal with financing small scale (rain-fed) agriculture, often subject to season changes. However, much remains to be done. The outreach in micro-credit is estimated to have satisfied only a small proportion of the potential demand, while the growth of individual enterprises and the impact on clients' income remain low. It is becoming more and more challenging to further expand the micro-credit outreach, introduce inclusive finance to reach remote villages and very poor people, as well as ensure an impact on the lifestyle of clients. This is due, among other things, to poor infrastructure, particularly the road network and other communication channels, low level business support, as well as the 'entrepreneurship challenge'. This calls for a collaborative effort of all stakeholders in rural development. The present paper examines the opportunities and challenges faced while expanding access to microfinance to poor people in remote areas.