Blockchain Papers

Javid Azimov, Ufuk Alkan

No abstract is available for this record.

David A. Dyker

This chapter looks at how producing units in the Soviet economy and intermediate planning bodies articulate investment programs and apply pressure for their implementation. It presents evidence to suggest that these executive bodies must bear a large proportion of the immediate responsibility for the excess demand for investment resources that is such a dominant feature of the Soviet economic scene, and for specific distortions of resource allocation present in the investment process. The main deficiency of the economic mechanism enshrined in the industrial-planning experiment lies in its failure to make a substantial impact on the problem of restructuring the system for financing capital investments and the development of production, and for introducing the achievements of science and technology at the enterprise level. Decentralized investment was much featured in the Kosygin planning reform, and by 1972 it accounted for nearly 20 percent of total state investment.

Hermann Levy

Modern promoters bear a certain resemblance to the "projectors" of former centuries, they are a new set of commercial or financial industrialists who were certainly not known, because they were not a necessity, in the single-factory era of decentralized industrial development. Their task has been and still is to float financial projects huge enough to tackle the wide field of capital supply necessitated by the amalgamative aims of large undertakings, which imply the buying out of weak competitors. In last fifteen years it has certainly not always been genuine financial need of industry in regard to the carrying through of a more economic concentrative organization, which has bestowed upon finance capital the opportunity of providing new services for industry and has created a closer link between finance and industry, but the reverse has happened as well. It has of late become more and more evident that the concentrative tendencies in modern industry are giving a double role to financial capital.

David Mamunts, Vladimir E. Marley, Leonid S. Kulakov, Elena M. Pastushok · 5 authors

Recently, 80% of banks admitted that they are already developing products based on this technology. The use of blockchain technology in other areas. Storage at the distribution cloud. Multiple copies in different parts of the network, the system is much safer; identity management. Identifier based on the blockchain that will replace usernames and passwords of online users; registration and verification of data. Constant control register is significantly more secure than traditional databases and etc. The respect and popularity of the blockchain in Russia. Research in this area by the Central Bank and the Ministry of communications, the representatives of these agencies have repeatedly stated. The planned creation of a nationwide automated system of accounting and information processing. Private business is moving in the same direction, there are already a number of projects. Trade and many other areas of our lives in the near future may become fully automated.

Harold Szu

The invention of "BiT Coin (BTC)", by Satashi Nagamoto circa 2008, remains as a formidable task. There is a plenty of benefits to motivate a further development of BTC without the rare metal material as the token, as the early Digital Crypto Currency (DCC), e.g. ( "I owe you such under this reneging condition." The major difference in secured feature is taking the available World Wide Web broadcasting one-way to all memberships in the Cloud. However, only the (1) involved trading partners can read with their private keys, (2) no third party banking or broker fee, (3) no International currency exchange fee, and (4) no one can rob the digital bank, etc. These benefits have been endorsed by Small Business Innovative Research.

Бухонова, Sofiya Buhonova, Дорошенко, Yuriy Doroshenko · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Lee Bacon, George Bazinas

No abstract is available for this record.

Nadina Lauren Anderson

This dissertation investigates patterns of financial exchange in Ukrainian couples. While previous studies of money management focus on the physical organization of money in the home—e.g. pooled, independent, partially pooled—I focus on the meaning of money in exchange and explore how patterns of exchange become legitimized in the home. Drawing on data from 110 in-depth interviews with married and cohabiting individuals, I advance a theory of gendered money and demonstrate how couples give special symbolic meaning to men’s money in domestic exchanges. Unlike earlier perspectives on gender and money such as resource theories and gender performance, this framework acknowledges money as a prop and tool that couples use to construct gender boundaries and signal normalcy in the marital relationship. Integrating concepts from economic sociology with Hochschild’s insights on the symbolism of domestic labor, I find that Ukrainians use money as a token and symbol of value, not as a commodity with which to obtain desired outcomes. By spending men’s money on "necessary" items and avoiding accessing women’s money in the household, couples construct men’s money as both visible and valuable while rendering women’s money non-fungible. Partners adopt the financial practices that feel comfortable and gender-appropriate, even when women earn more than their husbands. Building on this framework of gendered money, I problematize the concept of a gender "ideology" by arguing that gender beliefs do not always drive financial practices in ways anticipated by gender scholars. Using Swidler's toolkit theory of culture to better understand the duality of gender beliefs and gender structures, I argue that not all gender beliefs can be conceptualized as "ideological." I explore how many of my respondents were inconsistent in the ways they discussed gender and fairness in the home. These inconsistencies provide evidence that individuals can be highly flexible in the ways they legitimize their domestic exchanges. This flexibility creates dilemmas for individuals who desire to change their strategies of action over time. Specifically, I give examples of women’s thwarted desires—respondents who wanted to align their practices with their beliefs but could not due to the lack of cooperation from their partner. I conclude that practices need not always match articulated beliefs; moreover, particular patterns of exchange are culturally entrenched and difficult to displace. Lastly, I analyze how money and labor are symbolically exchanged in the home. I argue that power asymmetries occur when one partner must exert more labor to engage in an otherwise “equal” exchange with their partner.

Oksana Snizhko

The article is dedicated to critical analysis of competitive conceptual approaches to determining the essence of financial system. The system establishing element of the financial system resource concept is understanding finance as economic relations of formation, allocation and use of financial resource funds with the purpose of performing functions and tasks of the state/company and provision of conditions for expanded reproduction. According to this approach, the notion «financial system» is further determination of finance and shall be interpreted as the totality of relatively separated but mutually related spheres and links of relations, in the process of which centralized and decentralized financial resource funds are created and used. The institutional concept of the financial system considers finance as a social institution that organizes determined ways of interactions between individuals or their separate groups in the society. Its target purpose is to minimize transaction expenses arising at exchange of binding requirements for real resources in the economy. Under this approach, the financial system is understood as an aggregate of means — financial institutions and markets — which result from the evolution of social contracts and with the help of which intertime decisions and interactions are fulfilled and coordination of savings and investments in the economy is performed. The article shows that the alternative theoretical models of financial system contain structural elements heterogeneous by content and nature of interrelations, with various properties. The differences between them concern methodological approach to distinguishing qualitative signs which determine the essential nature and structure of the financial system; mechanism of formation and functioning of financial relations; nature of distribution and scheme of financial resources flow; the nature of functions of the financial system in the economic environment; special mechanism of effect of the financial system upon the economic system. Considering the theoretical and methodological differences between the resource and institutional concepts of the financial system, the author offers to divide them into two theoretical models — financial system concept and the concept of the system of finance

László Antal, Lajos Bokros, István Csillag, László Lengyel · 5 authors

The Hungarian economy is heading towards a crisis in the late 1980s. Despite all changes, wastage of resources remains and adjustment to the market fails to emerge. The unchanged structure and errors of economic policy have led in the short term to disequilibria. Only comprehensive, radical socio-economic reform can lead the way out of the crisis, its direction being from an indirect mechanism toward decentralized market socialism. In economic policy, a turn has to be achieved, to break with earlier multiple priorities. Illusions of faster growth, maintained living standards and curbed inflation must give way to immediate structural transformation. Monetary restriction has to be applied (strict regulation of the money supply, limited availability of credit raised by the budget, autonomous central banking policy, reduction of budget subsidies, more efficient management of budget-financed institutions, etc.) A consistent programme must be drawn up to eliminate crisis industries. Large, uneconomical CMEA investment projects must be re-examined. A turn in economic policy can only be achieved by reform of the mechanism. Part of this is to diversify ownership and render it competitive (equal rank for ownership forms, transition into each other, specific harmony between self-government and share property, new regulations for foreign capital participation), and creation of a long-term interest in capital assets. Anti-monopoly measures and consistent bankruptcy procedures are needed to increase the number and autonomy of actors in the market. Tax reform must be implemented even in the short run, to eliminate ad hoc interference and secure neutrality in competition. Social reform must affect the partys role in the economy. It should be made possible for various economic policy platforms and groups to form within the party. The maker of autonomous economic policy should be a responsible, effective government. It is expedient to increase Parliaments role in creating and preserving economic constitutionalism and checking on government. Founding free representatives of interests, with truly voluntary membership, should be enabled, so that various economic interests can appear openly and conflicts be handled. Arbitration forums between interest representers and the government need to be set up. Finally, reform that points the way out of the troubles can be applied only with active social participation. It is vital for the countrys grave economic situation to be made clear to the public, and to have alternative programmes openly compete with each other.

Miron Mushkat, Roda Mushkat

The revolutionary Chinese institutional order has given way to a more liberal governance regime, which continues to evolve. Nevertheless, as changing patterns of micro-economic regulation illustrate, this has not been a linear and straightforward process. Rather, waves of decentralization and recentralization have unfolded in close succession, and liberalization and reregulation have often been pursued simultaneously. This apparently unique policy configuration seems to be impinging on governance in other parts of the world, given that the “emerging giant” responsible for the “product” is increasingly acting as an active global “rule maker,” as distinct from a merely passive “rule taker.” Yet, it is inadequately understood and is subject to insufficiently critical evaluation. A detailed and probing examination of the substantial academic literature on the subject reveals lingering ambiguities, noticeable gaps, a significant scope for further integration of the various threads, and an uneven picture pointing to potentially less favorable lessons than commonly drawn. * Adjunct Professor of Economics and Finance, Syracuse University (Hong Kong Program) and Adjunct Professor of Global Finance and Governance, Chinese University of Hong Kong. ** Professor of International Law, Hopkins-Nanjing Center, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University and Honorary Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong. BYU Journal of Public Law [Vol. 27

Ekaterina Zhuravskaya

Reforms during the 1990s in Russia entailed not only economic liberalization and democratization but also transition from a highly centralized unitary state to a highly decentralized federal state. Since the advent of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, former president Boris Yeltsin’s experiments with decentralization have been recognized as unsuccessful and as leading to the very collapse of Russia. A consensus has emerged—among scholars, politicians, and the society at large—that the attempt to build a successful federal system in the 1990s badly failed. The new Russian leadership has been consistently taking measures since 2000 to recentralize both public finance and politics. This chapter addresses the following questions: Why did Yeltsin’s decentralization fail? What mistakes (if any) were made in the 1990s? How effective is Putin’s reversal of Yeltsin’s decentralization? Where is the notorious “vertical of power” taking Russia? These questions have no easy answers, but the experience of other federal states and an examination of Russia’s own political economy of intergovernmental relations suggest that the approach being implemented now is no less dangerous than the spontaneous decentralization of the 1990s. Indeed, because of the size of the country and the heterogeneity of its regions, federalism in Russia is inevitable. For the effective functioning of the principles of federalism, Russia needs the “vertical of power,” which political economists refer to as political centralization. The “verticals,” however, can be different. Other countries’ experience with federalism, particularly Mexico and China, shows that the measures that Putin and company are undertaking are unlikely to succeed.

Vesna Aleksić

Pursuant to the Local Self-Government Act adopted in February 2002, the fiscal decentralization has been carried out without the institutional decentralization of functions of the central tax administration, whereby only the affirmation of the self-government authorities has been done in the part of financing the budges of self-government units, but not in the part of administering the original local public revenues. The Local Self-Government Financing Act created a legal ground for decentralization of functions of the central tax administration (Tax Administration). Further concretization of competence of the local tax administration shall be done by the Amendment Act to the Tax procedure and Tax Administration Act.

Евгений Федорович Сабуров, N. Tipenko, A. Cherniavskii

Budget federalism in Russia began in 1992. Under the effects of strong centrifugal trends, the decentralization of the budget and tax system took place in the form of "waves" of agreements regarding the share distribution of tax receipts, the entry into which entailed the delegation of ever greater powers to finance spending, especially social spending, to the regions.

Herrington J. Bryce

ABSTRACT This is a study of devolution of power and responsibility to local governments in Russia, the resulting pressures on local revenues and expenditures, and the challenges these pose to local public administrators currently and for the foreseeable future. It is developed from nearly 100 hours of face-to-face interviews of top local public administrators in Cherepovetz, Russia, and from a careful reading and discussion of the parameters are which set by budget obligations, charters, federal, state, and local laws which set the legal and financial constraints within which the local public administrator works. INTRODUCTIOn Many areas in Russia have moved so rapidly toward privatization and local self-government that, today, the formal transition is nearly complete and problems of adjustment to and the instability of the new political and economic order are of concern.1 As a result of the devolution of power, a substantial number of these problems fall on the local public sector and the capacity of its administrators to administer a constantly growing body of laws and policies in the context of a dynamic environment in which previous Soviet law is irrelevant, gives wrong signals or is nonexistent. Recognizing this situation, the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) created the Russia Market Oriented Farm Support Authority (MOFSA) project to uncover these problems with the hope of helping local public officials design appropriate public policy strategies to deal with them. This case study draws from the author's work with Chemonics International and the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) in MOFSA in 1996 in Cherepovetz, Russia. It also benefits from the author's experiences with local public administrators in the United States, Estonia, and the Republic of Georgia. This study addresses the questions: (1) What is the nature of the decentralization and the devolution of powers and responsibilities to local governments in Russia? and (2) What are the resulting budgetary problems reported by local public administrators charged with implementing the newly acquired responsibilities in a democratic setting? Thus, unlike the burgeoning literature on privatization, this study focuses on devolution and its impact on local public administrators. This area of study has received relatively little attention except by such authors as Bird, Freund, and Wallich (1995), Alm and Sjoquist (1995), Mitchneck (1995), Bird, Ebel, and Wallich (1995), and Wallich and Nayyar (1993). Yet, it is the local public administrator who implements these ever-changing laws within an ever-changing political environment described by the articles in Lapidus and Walker (1995). Some characteristics of this residue are described in Lavigne (1995) and Aslund (1995) but largely from the economic perspective. This article focuses on the issues as they relate to local public administration. METHOD This study is based on nearly 100 hours of interviews with fifteen senior government officials of the Cherepovetz raion, including the head and deputy head of the local governments, all ministers and directors of departments including finance and agriculture, the chief legal counsel, the director of municipal properties who was also responsible for privatizing and who represents the state on certain private boards, the director of housing and utilities, two rural administrators, the director and chief accountant of the largest business enterprises in the area, the head of the largest consumer cooperative, the director of a school, and the members of the 17-member legislative assembly. Each was interviewed separately and each participated in three full days of interactive seminars in which the findings, reported here, on how devolution and decentralization have affected local budgets, were intensively reviews. The individual interviews were basically open-ended to encourage candor and to reduce interviewer influence. …

Wilbur G. Lewellen, Michael S. Long

Because of the presence of substantial informational asymmetries between borrowers and lenders, and an incomplete legal framework dealing with creditors' rights and bankruptcy, many debt financing vehicles which are used in developed market economies are poorly suited to economies that are in the transition from being centrally-planned to market-- driven. Our analysis indicates that asset leasing is an effective and efficient solution to the financing needs of borrowers in such countries, in that it lowers the risks and monitoring costs borne by lenders as compared with more traditional loans. INTRODUCTION Since the lifting of the Soviet Union's control over the former communist states of central and eastern Europe approximately a decade ago, and the subsequent dissolution of the USSR itself, the countries affected-- some of which have only recently been created--have been in the process of making the transition from centrally-planned to market-driven economies. In that process, they have been the recipients both of financial support and economic advice from the developed nations of the West. Among the critical choices the countries have had to face is the speed with which they should seek to accomplish their respective transitions. That has been a contentious domestic political issue in virtually every instance, and has been the subject of differences of opinion among the nations' Western advisors as well. Some have recommended taking the decentralization and privatization plunge immediately and comprehensively, while others have argued for a more deliberate pace. The choices made and the results achieved have varied widely across jurisdictions. While the debate about the most appropriate pace of transitioning continues, there appears to be general agreement that the creation of a well-functioning capital market at some point along the way is integral to the success of the effort. This involves more than simply setting up a securities exchange. It necessitates the establishment of ownership and control rights, transfer procedures, disclosure requirements, provisions for investor protection, bankruptcy laws and creditors' rights--and an effective regulatory and judicial system to enforce the rules fairly and reliably. These of course were and remain among the least-developed features of all the previously-socialist economies. The issue we address here is the means by which firms in such countries might most logically arrange to finance the acquisition of capital assets during the current early stages of the transition of their economies, when financial markets are in an embryonic state. We argue that leasing provides a near-ideal solution to firms' financing problems in that setting. LAWS, CAPITAL MARKETS, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT The overriding goal of privatizing the stateowned enterprises of a transitioning economy is to promote increased economic efficiency by exposing those enterprises to the discipline of competition in both the product and capital markets. There is evidence from a number of studies that privatization in fact generally accomplishes this objective. In the vast majority of cases, output and employee productivity rise, cash flow and profit margins improve, capital expenditure rates increase, debt levels are reduced, and more workers are ultimately employed (Boardman and Vining, 1989; Galal, Jones, Tandon, and Vogelsang, 1992; Megginson, Nash, and van Randenborgh, 1994; Pohl, Anderson, Claessens, and Djankov, 1997). In order to achieve these gains, not only goods and services but also the ownership claims to the newly-privatized corporate assets must trade freely among consumers and investors in the marketplace. The trading of those claims is what enables the economy's factors of production to be priced, and its assets thereby to be allocated to their most productive uses. The more efficient the marketplace for the claims, the better the resulting allocation. …

Nicolai N. Petro

A specialist on Russian politics and society examines the apparent success of economic and political liberalism in Novgorod oblast' in the 1990s. The article is based on published and unpublished documentary sources from the region, as well as in-depth, repeated interviews with local officials during 1997-1999. Focus is on progress in economic reform, finance, and foreign investment, forms of political decentralization and representation, the growth civic associations, and styles of political leadership. Several explanations for these outcomes are proposed and discussed.

Paul Collins, Frederick Nixson

Abstract Mongolia is the second oldest communist regime after Russia, and its reforms have been under way since 1986. It is a land‐locked state and is characterized by its large physical size relative to a small population, an almost total historical dependence on the former‐USSR and a limited range of agricultural and mineral resources. Despite the profound effects that the collapse of the USSR and Comecon have caused, Mongolia has adopted a ‘shock therapy’ approach to reform, embarking simultaneously on a bold programme of both political and economic change. This article traces the genesis of the reform strategy, highlighting the interplay between external events and internal debate and sometimes outlining the major areas of the reform programme: the introduction of macroeconomic management to replace central planning, the improvement of incentives and an ambitious programme of privatization. The undertaking of such a programme in the Mongolia points to the importance of a social safety net and popular support for the reforms. The article then describes the complementary reforms of public administration that have been more recently introduced in the wake of a new constitution, with their emphasis on professionalization of government administration, transfer of responsibilities to provincial and local government and improved policies and institutions for national training. International technical assistance has and continues to play a significant role in supporting the above. A number of lessons are drawn with regard to strategy, particularly the need at programme level for an integrated or systems approach that can ensure linkages between different elements and at the level of training the need for imaginative approaches to design and delivery. The article draws conclusions on the prospects for success in each area of the reform programme. Critical for public administration restructuring and professionalization is the issue of institutional capacity for implementation. While the legal framework has now been laid down for decentralized government, for example, there is little prior experience in local government of many areas of functional management, finance and budgeting, investment planning and social services administration. On the economic front, the shock therapy stragegy has been adopted despite some earlier advice on the preconditions for successful privatization—with regard for example to market structure, the development of the financial sector and most crucially the continued role of the state in fostering entrepre‐neurship in a society devoid of any recent history of such.

Robert Legvold, Robert W. Campbell

PREFACE 1. Introduction 2. A Perfect-Administration Interpretation of the Soviet-type Economy Actors, Sectoring, Administration, and Markets in the Classic CPE What Is Administration or Management? Functions of Management Is Perfect Administration Possible? Soviet-type Economic Bureaucracies A Possible Model of Perfect Administration 3. Resource Allocation in the Classic CPE Short-run Balancing Control-Evaluating Performance and Passing Out Rewards Investment Decisions Research, Development, and Innovation 4. Market-mediated Relationships Market-mediated Relations in the Administrative-Command Economy Relations with Households Agriculture Foeign Trade 5. Financial and Macrophenomena in the Administered Economy Allocation, Efficiency, and Value under Perfect Administration Linear Programming Fundamentals Finance and Money under Perfect Administration Behavior of the Actual System: Microeconomics Behavior of the Actual System: Macroeconomics Implications for Reform 6. Growth Strategy and Growth Performance in the Socialist World Soviet Development Strategy Growth Performance Productivity Conclusions on Soviet Growth Growth in Eastern Europe The Chinese Variant 7. The Semi-reformed Economy and Its Characteristic Problems The Semi-reformed Economy Addition of New Sectors and Markets Difficulties of Coherent Decentralization through Regulators Monetary Institutions and Policy Fiscal Instruments and Fiscal Policy The Problem of Monopoly Power What Remains to Be Done 8. The Foreign Sector in the Semi-reformed Economy Tasks of the Transition Compromises and Halfway Houses in Foreign Trade 9. Property, Ownership, Privatization Theoretical Considerations Creation of New Property Institutions in the Reforms 10. The Problem of Transition and the Future of Reform Issues of the End Point Issues in the Transition Is Transformation Possible? SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTHER READING INDEX