Blockchain Papers

Luiz R. de Mello, Matias Barenstein

No abstract is available for this record.

Guillermo Guerra Martín

Many people think changes are always good. However, sometimes it is not so. Before making a change, one must ask what kind of change is it and how it will affect status quo. This paper tries to show how an institutional change that has been wrongly conceived could lead to a worse situation. The Venezuelan experience studied here is a ?show-window? of contradictory decentralization process, in which sub-national governments lack the faculties to generate their own income, and moreover, in which oil income continues to be almost the only source of governmental financing.

Armando Arredondo, Irene Parada

OBJECTIVE: The results of an evaluative longitudinal study, which identified the effects of health care decentralization on health financing in Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru are presented in this article. METHODS: The methodology had two main phases. In the first, secondary sources of data and documents were analyzed with the following variables: type of decentralization implemented, source of financing, funds for financing, providers, final use of resources, mechanisms for resource allocation. In the second phase, primary data were collected by a survey of key personnel in the health sector. RESULTS: Results of the comparative analysis are presented, showing the changes implemented in the three countries, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each country in matters of financing and decentralization. CONCLUSIONS: The main financing changes implemented and quantitative trends with respect to the five financing indicators are presented as a methodological tool to implement corrections and adjustments in health financing.

Carsten Schmidt

The international character of today’s most pressing environmental problems has become a key challenge for environmental policy making. As regulation by a supranational authority is not a realistic option at present, policymakers have to rely on decentralized approaches to the management of international environmental resources. This study combines two core dimensions of international environmental policy: the traditional search for cost-effective policy instruments and the creation of incentives for voluntary cooperation among sovereign nations. The analysis offers some clear-cut policy recommendations for the design of environmental treaties and for the further development of existing international institutions to protect the global environment.

William Jack

The author studies the
\n allocation-between a central government and a local
\n authority--of responsibility for planning, financing, and
\n operations for the delivery of health services, in the
\n context of an incomplete contracts model. In this model,
\n inputs are required of both the central government and local
\n authorities but they are unable to write down, and commit
\n to, a complete and binding contract describing the actions
\n both should take. The model is meant to capture the tradeoff
\n between central and local authority in decisions about both
\n financing and the provision of services. Each party provides
\n a specific input--for example, the central government
\n establishes a drug procurement system while the local
\n authority designs and implements an incentive scheme to get
\n doctors to carry out their responsibilities appropriately.
\n The responsibility for delivery of services is identified
\n with the ownership of essential infrastructure, such as the
\n clinic or hospital. The author finds that to maximize the
\n joint surplus of the two public bodies: Ownership of the
\n facility should be given to the party that most values the
\n well-being of local residents. (This way, if ex post
\n bargaining breaks down, each still enjoys some benefits from
\n the other's actions.) Financing authority and
\n responsibility for delivering services should be negatively
\n correlated. Generally it is optimal to allocate tax
\n authority to the party that values the residents'
\n well-being less--in other words, separate spending
\n responsibility (ownership) from financing authority. A
\n heavier financing burden (access to a small and inefficient
\n tax base) has the same incentive effect as asset ownership:
\n It increases the return to effort. If transferring ownership
\n of the physical asset is costly (because the party that
\n builds the asset has an inherent advantage in operating
\n it-that is, there is some human capital embodiment), it may
\n be optimal for the party with the higher construction costs
\n to have planning authority. Somewhat paradoxically, the
\n greater the costs of transferring assets from one party to
\n the other, the more likely that ownership of the facilities
\n and their provision should be separated.

Stan Chervin, Kelly D. Edmiston, Matthew N. Murray

Decentralized systems of government finance give rise to fiscal disparities due to interjurisdictional variations in tax bases and expenditure needs. Intergovernmental aid is used to address such disparities. This article explores changes in local tax capacity and intergovernmental aid resulting from urban shopping malls that extract retail sales and sales tax revenue away from surrounding areas, especially rural counties. A model is developed and estimated to determine the impact of urban malls on local government sales tax bases, controlling for sales tax rate differentials and other factors. The results reveal a 15.9% decline in the sales tax base for counties in close proximity to two newmalls. The analysis is extended to examine impacts of changing local tax capacity on state education aid. Based on the programconsidered here, less than 20% of the loss in own-source revenue is recovered through increased aid.

Chengzhi Wang

With an introduction to the overall underdevelopment of higher education in China compared with the American counterpart, this article briefly examines the main trends of over two decades of development of the governance and financing systems of China's higher education sector. This article analyzes the resource allocation from governments and revenue generation in institutions under the reform policies of administrative decentralization and financing diversification. The new "Great Leap Forward" in higher education in 1999 and beyond, i.e., the radical and, to a certain extent, desperate mass higher education policy and practice of expanding enrollments in order to spur domestic consumption, is critically analyzed. By examining the ongoing institutional merging and "co-building" and the most recent enrollment expansion, the writer points out the economic significance for higher education of overcoming diseconomies of scale and inefficiencies. However, the long-range outcomes of the seemingly exciting investment in and consumption of mass higher education are difficult to predict.

D. Woodle

This paper discusses the movement toward self-sufficiency in vaccine supply in developing countries (and countries in transition to new economic and political systems) and explains special supply concerns about vaccine as a product class. It traces some history of donor support and programmes aimed at self-financing, then continues with a discussion about self-sufficiency in terms of institutional capacity building. A number of deficiencies commonly found in vaccine procurement and supply in low- and middle-income countries are characterized, and institutional strengthening with procurement technical assistance is described. The paper also provides information about a vaccine procurement manual being developed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Health Organization (WHO) for use in this environment. Two brief case studies are included to illustrate the spectrum of existing capabilities and different approaches to technical assistance aimed at developing or improving vaccine procurement capability. In conclusion, the paper discusses the special nature of vaccine and issues surrounding potential integration and decentralization of vaccine supply systems as part of health sector reform.

Jiahua Che

I put forward a new theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between soft budget constraint syndrome and the economic performances of firms. It differs from the existing theoretical framework, à la Dewatripont and Maskin (1995), in the soft budget constraint literature. In this paper, soft budget constraint syndrome arises when firms that are expected to lose money are financed. The paper highlights a trade-off between hard and soft budget constraints. While soft budget constraints may compromise firms' incentives to improve performances, an all-out effort to harden budget constraints may put macro stability at risk, especially for economies suffering from allocative inefficiency. Based on this trade-off, the paper shows that a transition from centralized financing to decentralized financing in fact compromises firms' incentives to improve their performances, whereas a transition from centralized financing to a dual track system enhances efficiency. In the dual track system, budget constraints are soft in the centralized track but the macro stability of the economy is assured as a result. The macro stability enhances the disciplinary effect of hard budget constraints in the decentralized track, which in turn promotes firms' incentives to improve performances. The paper sheds light on a complementary relation between soft budget constraint syndrome in the state sector (i.e., the centralized track) and the remarkable growth of the non-state sector (i.e., the decentralized track) in China.

照雄 中島

The important issue, for both central and local governments in the 2000's is financial reconstruction and administrative reform. And, pursuing a policy of government decentralization has been regarded as an important issue in 1990's, and since 1999 it has received much attention at the central government and local government levels. In 1999,the Government Decentralization Law was passed. As expected, that the relationship between the central and local government has changed drastically. This report gives a study of Basic Concepts of Reform of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government, and so on, is presented as follows : 1. Introduction. 2. Central Public Finance and Local Public Finance : An Overview. 3. Issues of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 4. Conversion of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 5. Development of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 6. New Public Management. 7. Conclusion.

隆雄 飯田, タカオ イイダ, Takao Iida

No abstract is available for this record.

Guillém López i Casasnovas, Esther Martínez Garcia

The authors analyse the magnitude and composition of the fiscal imbalance between Catalonia and the Spanish Central government for 1995-1998, and its evolution since 1986. A flow approach is adopted, whereas the usual incidence hypothesis is followed in alloating tax revenues. The results show a rather stable net contribution of Catalonia to the Spanish Central government in 1998 of 1.3 trillion pesetas (8.37% of Catalan GDP). Calalonia participated in 19.60 % of Central government revenues, but received only 15.03% of expenditures. Catalan population is 15.5% of the Spanish total. Overall, in 1994 constant terms, the evolution of the per capita imbalance rises from 117,133 PTAs. in 1986, to 192,294 PTAs. in 1998. The authors also introduce an explicit way to deal with the effects of Central government budget deficits on fiscal revenues, in computing the financial distortions of the political and economic central role of Madrid, different tax compliance among regions, the impact of inflation differentials, and the evaluation of the social security flows on regional imbalances. In general, the authors favour an estimation of the amount of revenues at the disposal of Catalonia in order to finance its own expenditure, without the mediation of the Central government, but maintaining a single Spanish fiscal system. This approach may force the contribution of Catalonia as any other region to finance the joint expenditures of the Central government, and/or to finance its owm public sector, but in a rather more dear way. As a result, with regard to the financial decentralization system, territorial solidarity and social cohesion is enhanced, at the same time that autonomy and self-governance, in a better way than it is today.

Lior Strahilevitz

This Article argues that the restoration of a communitarian approach to taxation can help soften the widespread anti-tax sentiment that has engulfed the United States. It proposes and analyzes a concrete plan for the collection of revenue that taps into the same sense of shared community sacrifice that was invoked in fourteenth-century England. It proposes that the United States adopt a modernized, decentralized system of revenue collection modeled after the requisition, which was the chief means of raising revenue in the early American republic. Whereas the federal government currently collects approximately seventy percent of the nation's tax dollars, and the state and local governments collect the remaining thirty percent, this Article contemplates how the United States, and the individual states themselves, might differ if those numbers were reversed. The article begins by explaining why, due to the historical peculiarities of America's fiscal history, a decentralized approach to collecting revenues is not currently under consideration. Further, the article proposes a tax system in which the federal government would abolish the individual income tax, and discusses the likely effects of such a program on governmental spending by the states and on citizen mobility. The Article then explores the justifications for such an approach to taxation. The Article also consists of a utilitarian analysis of the costs and benefits of shifting to requisitions finance. Finally, the Article confronts the serious policy challenges that would arise if society were to implement requisitions finance, and ends with a discussion of several variations on the requisitions finance model that can address several of the communitarian and utilitarian criticisms.

Jiahua Che

No abstract is available for this record.

David A. Wirth

The studies collected in this chapter are emblematic of the wider universe of non-binding instruments, illustrating the flexibility in substantive content and procedural context that is a principal hallmark of non-binding undertakings.Taken as a group, the studies reveal cleavages characteristic of the legal and policy dynamics surrounding non-binding instruments, as they vary in: (l) choice of non-binding rather than binding format; (2) institutional setting; (3) relationship to binding international law; (4) identity of norm-creating entities; (5) identity of parties addressed; (6) processes for adoption and implementation; (7) impact on domestic policy and law: and (8) the role of the public in norm formulation, implementation, and compliance.Beth Simmons' analysis highlights many attributes of a 'classical' or 'traditional' non-binding vehicle, to the extent such a model can be identified among the extraordinarily diverse examples assembled in this volume.Her study consequently is useful as a benchmark, providing a reference point against which the others can be compared.The Forty Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) are a policy response to an archetypal collective action problem: how to overcome the incentives inherent in the decentralized and consent-based international system, which often rewards holdouts, scofflaws, free riders, and laggards.As described by Professor Simmons, the efforts of the United States to encourage or, indeed, leverage higher standards of performance on the part of other states-to 'harmonize up' -was a principal motivating factor explaining the nature of the FATF's activities generally and the Forty Recommendations in particular.Professor Simmons identifies characteristics frequently cited as benefits of a non-binding approach, which might be described as the 'choice of instrument' question.The commitment of states other than the United States is described as tentative or equivocal.In such a context, states might commit to binding obligations only of a modest character, if at all, while a non-binding 'soft' instrument can allow them to gain experience with more ambitious, aspirational goals in a less risky milieu.non-binding instruments also may be appropriate for circumstances in which consensus is elusive or illusory.Thus, they may be attractive alternatives to an inertial downward spiral towards the 'least common denominator' characteristic of many multilateral efforts.For these reasons, among others, non-binding instruments are often phrased, as

P. C. Mohan

Abengourou, with a population of 444,000
\n inhabitants, is one of the ten regions in Cote
\n d'Ivoire. In this region, the fight against HIV/AIDS is
\n enforced by a Regional Coordination Committee. What is
\n special compared to other regional initiatives in the fight
\n against HIV/AIDS is the organizational and community
\n approach as well as the system established for financing activities.

Rosario Manasan

This short note provides a framework for looking at public sector governance and productivity improvements. It argues that the role of government in enhancing productivity growth is two-fold. First, government should provide an environment that is conducive in improving total factor productivity in private sector production. Second, government should work to increase the productivity of the public sector itself. In terms of providing the appropriate economic setting that is favorable to private-sector-led development, government needs (1) to provide the macroeconomic and the microeconomic environment that will establish incentives for firms/individuals to act in accordance with the invisible hand had there been no market imperfection, (2) to provide the institutional infrastructure (i.e., property rights, law and order, rules and even application and enforcement of the same) that markets need to work efficiently; and (3) to ensure the financing/provision of adequate basic health care and education, and basic physical infrastructure (World Bank 1992). In particular, the instruments that government may use in this regard are include (1) direct government interventions in the product markets as defined by the regulatory structure in strategic sectors, and (2) economy-wide policies like financial liberalization, trade liberalization, and foreign investments liberalization. On the other hand, (1) budget reform (2) the installation of a system of performance measurement and incentive in the public sector, (3) the re-engineering of the bureaucracy, (4) the combating of corruption, and (5) decentralization are the key features of a program that will increase the productivity of government operations.

Armando Barrios Ross

espanolEn ausencia de un margen significativo para la descentralizacion plena de los principales tributos en Venezuela, la consecucion de los beneficios esperados de la descentralizacion amerita discutir que tipo de diseno institucional deben tener sus mecanismos de financiamiento. En mi entender, el reto fundamental para los responsables de ese diseno consiste en incorporar en esos mecanismos los incentivos apropiados para que los distintos actores coordinen sus acciones y promuevan la participacion de la sociedad civil en la toma de decisiones colectivas. Esto exige desarrollar una cultura intergubernamental cooperativa. La viabilidad de una cultura intergubernamental cooperativa solo sera sostenible cuando se internalice la nocion de que los recursos generados por los tributos de administracion centralizada no pertenecen exclusivamente al gobierno nacional, sino que deben ser derramados en toda la extension del territorio venezolano, de acuerdo con una mezcla de criterios redistributivos, de eficiencia asignativa y respetando el desarrollo socioeconomico balanceado. Esto es mas probable si prevalece la perspectiva de que figuras como el situado, las asignaciones economicas especiales y el Fides representan mecanismos de coparticipacion en los ingresos fiscales del pais y no simples transferencias desde el gobieno central. Asi, al interpretar los mecanismos intergubernamentales de financiamiento como modalidades de coparticipacion sobre unos recursos fiscales generados en todo el territorio, las relaciones intergubernamentales se hacen mas horizontales, aun cuando se siga reconociendo al gobierno central como un primu inter pares. EnglishGiven the fact that there is not a significant margin for full decentralization of the main taxes in Venezuela, achieving the expected benefits of decentralization requires to discuss what kind of institutional design should have its financing mechanisms. In my view, the fundamental challenge for the policy-makers is to built-in these mechanisms with the appropriate incentives for different levels of government coordination and civil society participation in the process of collective decisions making. This requirement implies to develop an intergovernmental cooperative culture. The viability of an intergovernmental cooperative culture will be sustainable to the extent the venezuelan society internalize the notion that central administered taxes do not belong exclusively to the national government. On the contrary, these resources must be spread through the whole national territory, according to a blend of redistributive, assignative and economic equilibrium criteria. This is more likely if there is a prevalent perspective that policy instruments such as the situado, the special economic assignments and Fides represent revenue-sharing mechanisms, and not just transfers from the central government. In such a way, interpreting the ingovernmental financial mechanisms as co-sharing devises over the fiscal resources produced in the whole territory, the intergovernmental relations become more horizontal, although we recognize the central government as a primu inter pares.

Miguel Urquiola

No abstract is available for this record.

Yoshirō Miwa, J. Mark Ramseyer

Alexander Gerschenkron argued that banks facilitate growth in “backward” countries, and modern theorists sometimes similarly claim that banks can promote growth by reducing informational asymmetries and improving the allocation of funds. Japan has played a part in these debates. In early twentieth‐century Japan, firms relied heavily on bank debt, observers argue. Those firms with preferential access to debt outperformed the others, and those that were part of the zaibatsu corporate groups obtained that access through their affiliated banks. In fact, Japanese banks did not play the role attributed to them. Japan was not a bank‐centered economy; instead, firms relied on equity finance. It was not an economy where firms with access to banks outperformed their rivals; instead, such firms earned no advantage. And it was not a world in which the zaibatsu manipulated their banks to favor affiliated firms; instead, zaibatsu banks loaned affiliated firms little more than the deposits those firms had made with the banks. During the first half of the last century, Japanese firms obtained almost all their funds through decentralized, competitive capital markets.

Richard Briffault

Localism and regionalism are normally seen as conflicting, conceptions of metropolitan area governance. Localism is the belief that the existing system of a large number of relatively small governments wielding power over such critical matters as land use regulation, local taxation, and the financing of local public services ought to be preserved. Regionalism would move some power to institutions, organizations or procedures with a larger territorial scope and more population than existing local governments. Regionalism appears to be a step towards centralization, and the antithesis of the decentralization represented by localism. Yet, in the metropolitan areas that dominate America at the end of the twentieth century, regionalism is not just the enemy of localism: It is also localism's logical extension. Localism is based on a set of arguments concerning the role of local governments in promoting governmental efficiency, democracy, and community. But in contemporary metropolitan areas, the economically, socially, and ecologically relevant local area is often the region. In these areas, concerns about efficiency, democracy, and community ought to lead to a shift in power from existing localities to new processes, structures, or organizations that can promote decision-making on behalf of the region. Regionalism is, thus, localism for metropolitan areas. Localists, however, do not become regionalists when they live in metropolitan areas. Indeed, resistance to regionalism is intense in many metropolitan areas. Localism is not simply a theory intended to advance certain normative goals. It is also a means of protecting the interests of those who receive advantages from the existing governance structure. Local self-interest, rather than the political values localism is said to advance, plays a central role in the opposition to regionalism. This essay explores the relationship between localism and regionalism. It considers the meaning of regionalism in contemporary urban policy debates and the reasons why regionalism currently enjoys so much attention from academics, urbanists and policy analysts. It reviews the arguments for localism, and explains how, despite the asserted conflict between localism and regionalism, the theories underlying localism actually make a case for regionalism in contemporary metropolitan areas. Finally, it examines the role of local self-interest in the resistance to regionalism, and the efforts of regionalists to respond by making the case for regionalism in terms of local self-interest as well.

Franco Reviglio

No abstract is available for this record.

Chenzhi Wang

With an introduction to the overall underdevelopment of higher education in China compared with the American counterpart, this article briefly examines the main trends of over two decades of development of the governance and financing systems of China's higher education sector. This article analyzes the resource allocation from governments and revenue generation in institutions under the reform policies of administrative decentralization and financing diversification. ...

Alessandro Innocenti

This paper gives an interpretation of the recent diffusion of the processes of productive outsourcing founded on two explanatory points. The first is that such processes replace a hierarchical paradigm of information diffusion with a decentralized paradigm in which independent subcontracting firms autonomously collect and process part or all of the prominent information. The second is constituted by the change of the modality of production innovation, becoming the result of autonomously developed inputs that are successively made complementary by the work of the network through an encapsulation process of the information. This is made possible by the fact that after an initial phase in which a new input is jointly projected by the contractor and the subcontractor and in which the information comes shared, a phase follows in which the prominent information for the specification of the characteristics of the product and for the solution of the local and unforeseen problems is collected and processed in a sequential manner and then encapsulated in the input by autonomous production units. In comparison with the vertical integration (make) or the market (buy), this form of governance (subcontract) allows for the organization in more efficient manner of the processing of the information, for the reduction of the informative costs and for the minimization of the risk of spillover.