Blockchain Papers

Mary Feeney, Eric W. Welch

No abstract is available for this record.

Yuval Ishai, Amit Sahai, Michael Viderman, Mor Weiss

No abstract is available for this record.

Fu De

In this paper,a sequential multi-signature scheme based on ElGamal algorithm was presented,which allows multiple signers to sign the same message.This scheme used zero-knowledge proof during the part of key forming to avoid the attack from signers,it simplifies the validation process between signers and reduces the cost of communication,and therefore it is more safe and practical.

Desheng Fu, Jiao Yang

No abstract is available for this record.

Michael Backes, Matteo Maffei

No abstract is available for this record.

Deny Zaniar Noor

Indonesia has been undergoing a reform process since the decentralization policy implemented in 2001. In terms of financing, the central government has run a fiscal decentralization policy as a strategy to accelerate regional development. This fiscal decentralization policy has also brought major changes in revenue, expenditure and economic growth of the Regency of Kudus, Indonesia (Kabupaten Kudus). This research is intended to scrutinize the implementation of fiscal decentralization in Kabupaten Kudus. Besides looking at various practices, it also attempts to examine the influence of fiscal decentralization on the economic growth in Kabupaten Kudus. The analysis of the research will focus on the indicator of fiscal decentralization, which is government expenditure, especially development expenditure in the form of infrastructure expenditure. The research employs secondary data from the Local Development Planning Agency, Local Revenue and Financial Management Agency, Local Central Bureau of Statistics of Kabupaten Kudus between the period of 1998 up to 2010. Data analysis is conducted by using qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis in the form of comparative analysis. The results of this research show that, first fiscal decentralization in Kabupaten Kudus has been performing quite well. Local governments can increasingly generate local revenue and manage the expenditure for public welfare too. However, continuous improvement still needs to be carried out so the regional community can further enjoy its benefits. Second, fiscal decentralization has a positive effect on the overall economic growth in Kabupaten Kudus.

Clemente Ruiz-Durán

No abstract is available for this record.

Jolie Liston

This thesis investigates the mechanisms underlying the early emergence of monumentality on an Oceanic island and the correlation between the development of monumental architecture and the long-term processes of sociopolitical evolution. Babeldaob in the Palau archipelago of western Micronesia was selected for this study due to the nature of its monumental earth architecture. Monumental in both horizontal scale of interconnected complexes and dimensions of individual structures, Babeldaob's earthworks emerged close to a millennium earlier, and were abandoned several centuries before, the advent of monumentality on other Pacific island groups. Unlike elsewhere in Oceania, Babeldaob's monumental structures form extensive conjoined clusters containing a multitude of morphological forms that served simultaneous practical and symbolic functions. The underlying structure of the investigation is dual-processualism, the co-existing network and corporate political economic orientations chosen by emerging leaders to create and legitimize their power and prestige. These strategies rely on interdependent political, ideological, ritual and economic power sources. Distinguishing between corporate and network modes employed in Palau's Earthwork Era (2400-1100 calBP) is a heuristic tool for assessing the temporal transformations in spatial dimensions, patterning and practical and ideological roles encoded in Babeldaob's earthworks. This research presents a new understanding of the chronological development, construction processes, spatial organization and intertwined tangible and intangible uses of earthworks based on stratigraphic excavations, pedestrian survey, spatial analysis and radiometric dating. These data sources support a new working model of the evolution of Babeldaob's sociopolitical complexity in a dual-processual framework. Babeldaob's sociopolitical organization model posits development from heterarchical kin groups, to competitive chiefdoms and finally to rival decentralized polities. Corporate and network political economic strategies fused to maintain a level playing field driving a volatile sociopolitical period. With a staple economy based on land, labour and the production of surplus, corporate leadership strategies prevailed. However, rival factions and competing polities were extremely dynamic as they manoeuvred for prestige and wealth through network alliances and warfare. By the end of the Earthwork Era, there is a clear expression of economic stratification and personal aggrandizement. The Earthwork Era political economy appears to be based on staple and ritual finance with the most valuable commodity the landesque capital and associated ritual, occupational and defensive earth architecture that further increased the economic value of the built landscape. These structures embodied a complex merger of energy investment, ancestral ties, ritual association, staple wealth and social bonding. Given Babeldaob's high precipitation, sloping land, and the instability and low native fertility of its highly weathered soil, development of step-terraces was an effective strategic choice to prevent land degradation and support a viable agricultural system. The recognition of the complexity and vulnerability of earthwork construction and dryland agriculture in these particular edaphic and climatic conditions led to the development of ritual behaviours associated with both activities. Earth structures dedicated to these performances bind staple finance to the dominant ideology.

Anne van Aaken

No abstract is available for this record.

Hendri Hendri

In this thesis, we construct an implementation of succinct non-interactive zero knowledge argument system. A non-interactive zero knowledge argument system is a protocol for a party (usually known as Prover) to provide a proof of knowledge to the solution of a statement to other parties (usually known as Verifier). The argument system will be able to provide such proof without leaking any other information regarding the solution. The non-interactivity allows such argument system to be done without requiring interaction between the parties involved. The statement that is proven in this work is the circuit satisfiability problem. The circuit satisfiability problem is a problem of deciding whether there exists an input that can make the final output of a circuit to be true. The argument system is based on Lipmaa's work \\cite{eprint2013:Lipmaa:NIZKSPECC} which uses span programs and linear error-correcting codes in its construction. We also try to give a very general explanation on zero knowledge argument system along the way in order to provide a simple concept to people encountering the notion for the first time. The argument system we attempt to construct is the non-adaptive version of the argument system. This version is useful for verifiable computation as pointed out by \\cite{Pinnochio2013:Parno} apart from its zero knowledge behavior. We begin by giving an overview on non-interactive zero knowledge, followed by span programs. We then proceed to describe on how to represent the circuit satisfiability problem using the mentioned tool. We present our implementation afterwards, listing out the libraries and implementation details that matters. We conclude by providing a speed measurement and possible future improvements of this work.

Xia Ji-jun

Based on the provincial panel data,this paper analyzes the effect of the decentralization of education finance on the output of compulsory education.It comes to the following conclusions: firstly,the decentralization of education finance between central and provincial governments has no significant effects on the total output of local compulsory education,but has significantly positive effects on the output of urban compulsory education and negative effects on the output of rural compulsory education;secondly,the decentralization of education finance between provincial governments and governments under provincial level has significantly negative effects on the output of urban and rural compulsory education;thirdly,fiscal input into education has no significant effect on the output of urban compulsory education,but has significantly positive effect on the output of rural compulsory education.It states that China should increase the central fiscal input into rural compulsory education,and the decentralization of education finance at provincial level is conducive to the increase in the output of urban compulsory education.

Isabelle Sekamana

Fiscal and financial decentralization consists of devolution of the financial resources and decision-making powers to sub-national governments that will allow them to implement the functions and responsibilities that have been delegated to them. In principle, every new responsibility must be followed with the appropriate level of resources and a precise definition of the resources of revenue for the execution of that new responsibility. In other words, finance must follow functions. The present research study entitled “The decentralized taxes as a tool for raising revenue from decentralized entities”. A case study of Gasabo District was been carried out with a purpose of helping decentralized entities to maximize their revenue collections. In this way, the specific objectives of this study were to identify various decentralized taxes collected by the districts, to compare the revenue collections before the Fiscal decentralization of 2006 (2003-2006) and the revenue collections after Fiscal decentralization (2008-2012), to determine the match between the annual collection targets and the revenue collections from decentralized taxes, and to come up with possible strategies on how decentralized taxes can increase revenue from decentralized entities. This research project is significant to policy makers at central government level to assess the level of success in meeting the targeted objective of fiscal decentralization policy. It will be significant to local government for identifying relevant strategies for better improvement of local taxation and to the researcher it serves as a partial fulfillment of the award of a degree in MBA and enriches the knowledge of researcher on the topic of study. Relevant literature related to the theories and models of other writers. As methodology, the study used both secondary and primary data. The researcher used the stratified random sampling technique to determine the sample size of 80. Quantitative method, comparative method, historical methods were used in this research. Secondary data was got from journals, documentation, which is in relation to the study objectives. Data entered in excel was presented by use of frequencies and percentages in tables. Data was been analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social scientists (SPSS. 18), was presented in table which showed the positive relationship between two variables. The research concluded that decentralized taxes have played a significant role for raising revenues from decentralized entities in Rwanda. Recommendation is made on focus to the channels that are more effective in mobilizing decentralized taxes in effective way such as focusing on cell channel and village channel as these are more effective channels for mobilizing decentralized taxes in order to get or raise more revenue, this can help districts to reduce the degree of dependency. The government should set appropriate strategies of tax recovery and improve database of taxpayers.

Yonatan Sompolinsky, Aviv Zohar

Bitcoin is a potentially disruptive new crypto-currency based on a decentralized opensource protocol which is gradually gaining popularity. Perhaps the most important question that will affect Bitcoin’s success, is whether or not it will be able to scale to support the high volume of transactions required from a global currency system. We investigate the restrictions on the rate of transaction processing in Bitcoin as a function of both the bandwidth available to nodes and the network delay, both of which lower the efficiency of Bitcoin’s transaction processing. The security analysis done by Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto [12] assumes that block propagation delays are negligible compared to the time between blocks—an assumption that does not hold when the protocol is required to process transactions at high rates. We improve upon the original analysis and remove this assumption. Using our results, we are able to give bounds on the number of transactions per second the protocol can handle securely. Building on previously published measurements by Decker and Wattenhofer [5], we show these bounds are currently more restrictive by an order of magnitude than the bandwidth needed to stream all transactions. We additionally show how currently planned improvements to the protocol, namely the use of transaction hashes in blocks (instead of complete transaction records), will dramatically alleviate these restrictions. Finally, we present an easily implementable modification to the way Bitcoin constructs its main data structure, the blockchain, that immensely improves security from attackers, especially when the network operates at high rates. This improvement allows for further increases in the number of transactions processed per second. We show that with our proposed modification, significant speedups can be gained in confirmation time of transactions as well. The block generation rate can be securely increased to more than one block per second – a 600 fold speedup compared to today’s rate, while still allowing the network to processes many transactions per second.

Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Ian Miers

Abstract—Anonymous credentials provide a powerful tool for making assertions about identity while maintaining privacy. However, a limitation of today’s anonymous credential systems is the need for a trusted credential issuer — which is both a single point of failure and a target for compromise. Furthermore, the need for such a trusted issuer can make it challenging to deploy credential systems in practice, particularly in the ad hoc network setting (e.g., anonymous peer-to-peer networks) where no single party can be trusted with this responsibility. In this work we propose a novel anonymous credential scheme that eliminates the need for a trusted credential issuer. Our approach builds on recent results in the area of electronic cash that, given a public append-only ledger, do not need a trusted credential issuer. Furthermore, given a distributed public ledger, as in, e.g., Bitcoin, our system requires no credential issuer at all and hence is decentralized. Using such a public ledger and standard cryptographic primitives, we propose and provide a proof of security for a basic anonymous credential system that allows users to make flexible identity assertions with strong privacy guarantees without relying on trusted parties. Finally, we discuss a number of practical applications for our techniques, including resource management in ad hoc networks and prevention of Sybil attacks. We implement our scheme and measure its efficiency. I.

Shingare Vidya Marshal

Cloud computing is the vast computing utility, where users can remotely store their data into the c loud so to have the benefit of the on-demand availability of huge a nd different applications and services from a shared pool of con figurable computing resources. Cloud-based outsourced storage space reduces the patron load of storage management. It also reduces the maintenance load of customer by providing a comparably low-cost, scalable, location-independent platform. This new model of data hosting service commence a new security challenges, which requires an independent a uditing service which audit the data integrity of cloud. The re are different existing auditing services available in cloud which audit data integrity remotely in static motion but these are n ot applicable whenever data is dynamically updated in cloud. Since it require efficient and secure dynamic auditing method for data owner. However in cloud, the clients no have direct physica l possession of data. It shows client faces different formidable ris k like missing or corruption of data. To keep away from the security a nd integrity risk of data, audit services are essential to ensur e the integrity and availability of outsourced data and to achieve digi tal forensics and credibility on cloud computing. Provable data possession (PDP), which is a cryptographic technique for verifying the integrity of data withou t retrieving it at an untrusted server, can be used to realize audit s ervices. In this paper, profiting from the interactive proof system, we address the construction of an interactive PDP protocol to prev ent the fraudulence of prove (soundness property) and the l eakage of verified data (zero-knowledge property) (1) (17) (20 ).

Murenzi Emmanuel

The Government of Rwanda has adopted many policies for her governance processes. Of the many policies, the Decentralization policy, for purposes of this research project, was taken as a case study. The Policy was adopted on the 26th May 2000 for Rwanda’s various governance approaches. Thirteen years down the road, as evidenced by 100% of all respondents. Some of them include limited finance, poor coordination, poor human resource capacities to mention but a few. More will be discussed in details. The decentralization policy was chosen because it crosscuts all sectors and therefore its ineffective implementation affects all other policies. The researcher took a census of all the 63 employees of the Rwanda Governance Board because this is generally a small number and the researcher tried to have every one respond to questionnaires. The RGB has the overall oversight function of policy implementation not only of the decentralization policy but of all other governance policies and was therefore considered best case study for this reason. The researcher used the descriptive research design. The study was guided by both a general objective and specific objectives. With the general objective, the researcher assessed the hurdles encountered in policy implementation and efficiency in decentralization. With the specific objectives; the research firstly identified the hurdles to policy implementation and efficiency in decentralization, secondly; to determine the efficient strategies toward policy implementation and thirdly; to explore the different policies governing public institutions. Data was collected from respondents to help understand why to date there are yet hurdles in policy implementation and efficiency in decentralization. Findings will be useful to many stakeholders in a number of ways; the academia, the public, learning institutions, and non-government stakeholders. Government will use the findings for appropriate decision making to address the hurdles further. They will also be a basis for further research. In order to ensure policy implementation and efficiency in decentralization, it was therefore recommended that the government increases the funding in public institutions, consider various stake holder participation, increase financial resources, capacity building, and also increased coordination and monitoring to mention but a few.

Blessing E.N. Thom-Otuya

Nigeria’s federalism has been distorted from its original vision and structure. This situation presents the concept of federalism as a weak form of government that needs to be transformed for effective performance. The British colonial masters, and our foremost patriotic nationalists, adopted federalism as the best form of government for a country that is glaringly diversified in geographic, ethnic, language and religious constitution.  At its initial practice in Nigeria, the regions were autonomous in governance, finance and duties. The military incursion into governance and politics, distorted the practice of decentralization for centralization. Noting that Federalism has propelled countries like USA, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Australia, etc.  to an enviable political administration and economy, there is need for Nigeria to re appraise her practice of federalism in order for her to transform the practice of democracy and her economy and impact positively on her national development and foreign policy. This paper attempts to examine Nigeria’s federalism, sieve the strength in the philosophy of federalism, determine where Nigeria’s dilemma in the practice is anchored and suggest ways forward. The purpose of this paper is to expose the strength in the philosophy of federalism and to strengthen its practice in Nigeria. Key Words: Federalism, Exploration, Dilemma

Steven L. Schwarcz

The title of this Symposium originally was “Rethinking Financial and Securities Markets.” It is, of course, somewhat presumptuous for scholars to try to rethink financial markets per se. Markets, including financial markets, are driven primarily by supply and demand. But scholars can and should try to influence the future of financial markets by rethinking their fundamental aspects. This Symposium presents work from leading scholars in the fields of law, economics, finance, and accounting. I will try to frame the discussion from the perspectives of these four disciplines. First, however, we need to identify what it is about financial markets that is worth rethinking. I will focus on ways in which financial markets have been changing. They are increasingly decentralized and fragmented. They are increasingly direct sources of firm capital—a process called disintermediation. They are increasingly global. They are increasingly creating funding mismatches, as short-term securities are used to finance long-term capital needs. And they (as well as financial market products) are increasingly complex and obscure to market participants, even with full disclosure. I will refer to these “financial market changes” throughout my talk.

Daniela Creţu

The financial decentralization is an essential component part for the political, administrative and economic decentralization process, with major involvement on the economic and social system in Romania. Although the authorities of the local public administration in Romania were authorised to ensure the local communities the services provided by law and even to involve in the economic-social development of the towns and communes, in fact they have never had enough financial sources from the state budget or from the local budgets. The local budgets represent the planning and management tools of the financial activity of the territorial-administrative units. Their structure reflects the autonomy level of the local administration towards the central level and the links existing between the different territorial administrations. Also, the local budgets reflect the flows of incomes formation and the expenses of the local administrations, the method of financing the expenses on destinations and the deficits covering. The local authorities must access external aid programs, in order to be able to achieve the investigation works related to the commune infrastructure, due to the fact that the local incomes are insufficient to achieve investigations works from their own sources. In this context, the present paper proposes to highlight the characteristics of the budget process within the local public administration in the rural sector area.

Matteo Vasirani, Sascha Ossowskí

No abstract is available for this record.

Nestor M. Davidson, Sheila R. Foster

In the discourse of local government law, the idea that a mobile populace can “vote with its feet” has long served as a justification for devolution and decentralization. Tracing to Charles Tiebout’s seminal work in public finance, the legal-structural prescription that follows is that a diversity of independent and empowered local governments can best satisfy the varied preferences of residents metaphorically shopping for bundles of public services, regulatory environment, and tax burden. This localist paradigm generally presumes that fragmented governments are competing for residents within a given metropolitan area. Contemporary patterns of mobility, however, call into question this foundational assumption. People today move between — and not just within — metropolitan regions, domestically and even internationally. This is particularly so for a subset of residents — high human-capital knowledge workers and the so-called “creative class” — that is prominently coveted in this interregional competition. These modern mobile residents tend to evaluate the policy bundles that drive their locational decisions on a regional scale, weighing the comparative merits of metropolitan areas against each other. And local governments are increasingly recognizing that they need to work together at a regional scale to compete for these residents.This Article argues that this intermetropolitan mobility provides a novel justification for regionalism that counterbalances the strong localist tendency of the traditional Tieboutian view of local governance. Contrary to the predominant assumption in the legal literature, competition for mobile residents is as much an argument for regionalism as it has been for devolution and decentralization. In an era of global cities vying for talent, the mobility case for regionalism has significant doctrinal consequences for debates in local government law and public finance, including the scope of local authority, the nature of regional equity, and the structure of metropolitan collaboration.

Michał Polasik, Anna Piotrowska, Radosław Kotkowski

Praca dotyczy sposobow wykorzystania waluty wirtualnej Bitcoin w handlu elektronicznym oraz przyjmowaniu darowizn przez organizacje non-profit. Jej celem jest określenie charakterystyki legalnych akceptantow Bitcoin, ustalenie metod akceptowania tej waluty oraz jej udzialu w ogolnej wartości sprzedazy. Wyniki empiryczne zostaly oparte na przeprowadzonym badaniu ankietowym, w ktorym wzielo udzial 111 oferentow internetowych z 35 krajow. Badanie umozliwilo określenie zasiegu akceptacji Bitcoin, jak rowniez poznanie profilu przyjmujących ją firm, z uwzglednieniem takich czynnikow, jak: profil dzialalności, lokalizacja, branza, zasieg geograficzny oraz skala prowadzonej dzialalności. Uzyskane wyniki wykazaly ponadto, ze w procesie akceptacji tej waluty bardzo istotną role odgrywają integratorzy platności. Jednocześnie obserwowane jest wśrod klientow niewielkie zainteresowanie platnością z uzyciem Bitcoin. (abstrakt oryginalny)

Десислава Стоилова

This study is intended to provide a critical overview of the local government finance reform and analyze the process of strengthening financial decentralization in Bulgaria. First of all, the specifics of government structure and the main components of the legal base in the scope of local self-government are presented. The quantitative analysis is focused on dynamics of the public expenditure indicators and the structure of local revenues, based on fact figures for the period 1990–2011 and forecast for 2012. The influence of economic crises on local government finance is discussed and estimated. A comparison is drawn between the three most severe downturns of Bulgarian economy during the last 20 years, namely the price liberalization in the beginning of transition (1991–1993), the credit crunch and series of bank bankruptcies, which caused the financial crisis in 1996–1997, and the current worldwide crisis. Some of the most important actions, taken by the government in order to consolidate the crisis are described and evaluated on the base of their effects on the local finance. The conclusion is that although the current crisis reached Bulgaria at comparatively mature stage of financial decentralization reform, municipalities can do very little without active central government support and cannot substitute for it in regard of the basic anti-crisis measures.

Björn Hasselgren

This thesis analyzes and discusses the development of the Swedish government’s role as owner and financier of roads and railroads from the 1930s until the 2010s. The influence on the development of the government’s role from two main theoretical paradigms is discussed and analyzed. These are: a) neoclassical and welfare economics; and b) new institutional economic theory with an organizational focus. The thesis shows that there has been a shift from an institutional view on the organization and financing of the road and railroad systems following the nationalization in the 1930-40s, to a view more based on welfare economics from the 1970s. Technology, economics and politics are three important factors influencing the development of the transport systems and of the government’s role. In the thesis these factors are covered in a co-evolutionary approach applied for analysis of the historical development. This approach connects to a dynamic view on organizations and firms in institutional theory. Over time there have been shifts in the strength of the factors (technology, economics and politics) influencing the development. There have also been controversies around financing principles and contradictions between different elements in the policies actually pursued over time. One such controversy has been whether to aim for full cost coverage or for marginal cost coverage. The thesis discusses how planning and coordination in the transport infrastructure sector can come about. A centralized public sector planner mode is contrasted towards a private sector spontaneous ordering mode. It is argued that it is difficult for a centralized planner to collect the necessary information and transform it into deepened knowledge in order to coordinate. A decentralized spontaneous ordering mode might though allow for including the necessary knowledge. The thesis illustrates a number of trade-offs that must be taken into consideration when discussing a possible future development for transport infrastructure and the government’s role. The following aspects are discussed: - the balance between public and private as the basic organizing principle; - the balance between government and regions/local governments when it comes to - the geographical division of responsibility; and - the balance between the national and EU levels for strategic transport infrastructure planning and coordination, also in relation to spontaneous coordination and centralized planning. The government has acted reluctantly and pragmatically and gradually developed its ownership role and the general policies in the sector. The government’s emphasis on market failure as its basic assumption has become stronger over time. The thesis brings a deepened understanding of the long-term development of the government’s ownership and policy formation in the transport infrastructure sector in relation to the two theoretical paradigms. This combination of a historical view with the theoretical economic background gives new insights into the past and future of the government’s role for transport infrastructure.