Blockchain Papers

Marc Fischlin, Cristina Onete

No abstract is available for this record.

Juan Manuel Zaragoza Bernal

Marriage is about love, since the 19 th century onwards unless. If we ask people around us about the basis for a solid relationship, will be at the top of the list. What we look for in a relationship is a dependable, sincere, and affectionate partner. Someone to until death. Resentment is out of focus, here. It has nothing to do with real marriage. It has nothing to do with love. The romantic concept of we could find in this definition of marriage is the source of deep tensions between partners and, more interesting, into the subject itself. Confronted with difficult situations, love could be replaced with others (negative) feelings: hate, anger, and, commonly, resentment. The arousal of these feelings could generate a crisis within marriage, leading to the failure of the relationship. Or, in other situations, it could generate an identity crisis in one of the members of the marriage, putting his/her inner self at risk. I will explore the difficult conciliation of and resentment when one of the members of the marriage suffers a chronic disease. The narratives of the other part (the caregivers) show how this task is supposed to be the supreme proof of love, but at the same time, we can detect how resentment is repressed, as something that could damage the very identity of the caregiver. The case study will help to explore how the repression of resentment shapes the experience of disease, and is capital for the creation of the social identity of both: the and the sick. Arthur Conan Doyle will be my first case study. The story is well known. In 1892, just after a holydays in Switzerland, Louise Doyle (Arthur's wife) was diagnosed as having a severe case of tuberculosis. For the following fourteen years, Arthur cared of his wife. She had only been given three months to live in late 1893. If she lived for thirteen years more, it was because Arthur's care. This is a complex case, and we can approach it from different perspectives. Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor, and he even attended a demonstration of a cure for tuberculosis by Professor Robert Koch in Berlin, in 1890. We know that he employed all his medical expertise in caring Louise. Care is not just about emotions, but also about technical skills. We can follow this path, but there are others we can explore too. Arthur was a rich man. Sherlock Holmes' adventures were a great success in late Victorian England, and Arthur became rich and famous. After Louise's disease, they travelled to Davos, Italy, and Egypt. He built a new house (Undershaw) in Surrey, where the weather was supposed to improve Louise's health. He bought the best medicines, and consulted with the best doctors. Care is an economical matter, and Conan Doyle had money enough to spend in Louise's treatments. But care is a social task, as well. The social self of the caregiver is at stake, and if he or she fails, the consequences could be the worst. This was Conan Doyle's case, also. He was the head of her family. Not only his wife and children, but her siblings and mother look at him for support. He had adopted this role from his childhood. He could not fail, his family and his own inner self were at risk. Technical skills, money, and social role. Care is about all that. And care is about emotions, of course, about love. We care of our loved ones, and we say their pain hurts us. We suffer with them, and we can cope with suffering because we them. But, what happens when fails? In 1897 Conan Doyle met Jean Leckie, and he fell in love with her. This relationship lasted until Louise's death. For the next ten years, Arthur tried to square his passion for Jean with his responsibility towards Louise. And here is where resentment (accompanied with selfdeception, frustration, and remorse) appeared. Through his letters and diaries, I will study this period of Arthur Conan Doyle's life, paying special attention to the emotional turmoil produced by this situation.

C. Rangarajan, Dinesh Kumar Srivastava

These essays comprehensively cover key aspects of fiscal federalism in India both in theoretical and empirical terms. An analysis of experiences and challenges of fiscal federalism as it evolved over the last sixty years since the First Finance Commission-reveals the emerging patterns in transfer of resources from the centre to the states. Management of Central and state finances relating to sustainability of debt and fiscal deficit is also an important aspect of the present discussion. Attention is drawn to the re-emergence of high levels of fiscal imbalance and the implementation of fiscal decentralization in India, particularly in the light of the recommendations by the Thirteenth Finance Commission. Comparison with two developed federal systems in the world, the Canadian and the Australian systems, is an important feature of this study.

Lorraine Frisina Doetter, Ralf Götze

The present study describes and explains the changing role of the state in the Italian healthcare system since the beginning of the 1970s, with a particular focus on developments following 1978 when the healthcare system was transformed from a social insurance system into a national health service. In order to address these changes in a systematic way, we track healthcare system development along three dimensions: regulation, financing, and service provision. With regard to regulation, we observe a relative retreat of the state due to decentralization processes and internal market mechanisms. Quantitative measures for the financing and service provision dimension also indicate a modest relative retreat of the state. Taking regional data into account, we identify a clear North-South-divide in the public/private mix of financing and service provision. Although the focus of the paper is to describe the changing role of the state in the Italian healthcare system, we also offer preliminary explanations. We seek to identify the role of exogenous shocks such as economic crises versus endogenous stressors specific to the healthcare system itself (i.e. inherent inefficiencies) on healthcare system change. Therefore, the paper aims to provide a tentative, yet dynamic account of healthcare system change that is both descriptive and explanatory.

Tumur Gunchinmaa, Dilrabo Hamdamova, Barbara van Koppen

The division of Central Asia into several independent states, and the transition from the centrally planned economy to a market economy in the majority of those states, affected all sectors and all social levels in the region. One such example is irrigation. Centrally planned and financed from Moscow, on-farm irrigation systems were managed by collective farms. The process of decentralization through the dismantling of collective farms led to a restructuring of services and infrastructure throughout Central Asia. Water users associations (WUAs) have been established to transfer on-farm irrigation management to farmers throughout the region, including Uzbekistan. Many women in Uzbekistan actively participate in farming activities, so their role in the on-farm irrigation restructuring process is important. Yet, the findings from this study suggest that participation of women is very limited in WUAs as very few women are registered as land owners. Because of high levels of migration by men to other countries, farm activities are mostly carried out by women. Despite this, women’s decision-making power within their farms is limited.

Christos Chrysoulas, Nicolas Sklavos

No abstract is available for this record.

Tan Ishak

The new era of forest governance in Indonesia was marked by publication of the Act 22, 1999 about District Autonomy, which led to shift from the old centralized forest management to decentralized one. The decentralized forest governance is expected to improve the overall of forest governance. It is evident, however, that the degradation of forest has actually increased under the decentralized governance. Why does this uncontrolled destruction of forest occur? The aims of the study are to research and understand dynamics and complexity of the monitoring administration for forest gavernance in local autonomous era in Indonesia, taking on case of West Java Province. The study also to detect variables having effects on the success of forest governance monitoring administration. The study was conducted using qualitative research method, employing in-depth interview techniques, combined with aspect of legislation and library study. The key informans was interviewed such as the stakeholders of senior foresters of Forestry Services of the Regency, Province, Forestry Department, Forestry Researcher Team, Non Government Organization, Government Forestry Bussiness, Forestry Lecturer, and the Local Community. The number of key informan of 23 persons, and have expertise more than 15 years at Bandung City, Bandung Regency, West Bandung Regency , Bogor Regency, Purwakarta Regency and Jakarta. This study found that the decentralized model only adds more destruction and complexity to the forest governance. The complexity of the problem is deteriorated by reformation euphoria and autonomous sentiments. The success of forest governance monitoring is determined by several major variables are: (i) Regulation, comprising of law and supporting rules,policy, and institution; (ii)Infrastructure comprising of financing, technology, information system, communication, coordination, and societal Involvement, and (iii) Human Resources, comprising of feasibility, perception, and integrity. The success of the forest governance monitoring is affected by secondary variables: The Quality of Forest Governance Planning and the prevailing Political Situation. For conclusion, the results of the study were contributing to theory, practice, and politics for improving the understanding and knowledge of the decentralization of forest governance.

Lejf Moos

No abstract is available for this record.

David W. Renshaw, Sarah M. Loos, André Platzer

No abstract is available for this record.

Sonia Esteban-Laleona, Pablo de Frutos-Madrazo, María Cristina de Miguel-Bilbao

Traditionally, academic debates about the benefits that the existence of multilevel government structures provide have been directly related to the gains in efficiency that derive from the processes of decentralization of the Public Sector. However, as of the last decades, the Public Finance has broadened its analysis towards other questions, one of them being whether the fiscal decentralization influences positively in the economic growth of a country. The objective of this document is to provide evidence on results of the main investigations out of topic, examining, both the temporal and space horizons selected in these studies, comparing the conceptual framework and the methodology used by the different authors.

Nieves Lagares Díez, Susana Rúiz Seisdedos

Across this article we try to do a tour for the decentralized cooperation, for his characters, his principal virtualidades, the still hanging challenges and the innovations that this approach has experienced in the last years, since appeared in the Plan The Director 2009-2012 or the bet of the Autonomous Communities for collaborating with multinational organizations.

Raúl Espejo, Alfonso Reyes

No abstract is available for this record.

Albarracín Cepeda, Teresa Elizabeth

This research development in the Autonomous Decentralized of Canton the Mana, is located on the street November 27 between San Pablo and Manabi, Cotopaxi Province, bounded on the North Province of Los Rios, South Canton and Canton Pangua Quinsaloma ; East: Canton and Canton Sigchos Pujili; West: Canton Valencia, province of Los Rios. In order to meet the goal of Developing the Manual Functions for Decentralized Autonomous Government of the Canton the Mana, which will improve the performance administrative Lamanense benefit of the community. Decentralized Autonomous Government of the Canton La Mana has a population of 201 servers made by the directors, officers and employees working in different areas of the Municipal Government of Guangzhou's Mana. Within the research hypothesized With the development of the operating manual for the Decentralized Autonomous Government of the Canton the Mana, allow the development of administrative staff working in the different directions of the institution efficiently, the same was accepted at the end of the investigation. The development activities are focused on meeting the development objectives: 1) Diagnose the need for manual functions within the Autonomous Decentralized Government of the Canton the Mana, 2) Identify the areas that make up the organizational structure of the Autonomous decentralized Canton La Mana: 3) Design manual functions for Decentralized Autonomous Government of the Canton the Mana. The results of the investigation it was determined that 62% of officials of the Autonomous Decentralized of Canton the Mana unaware of the existence of a document where they are established functions of each position, 63% of staff did not know in detail the roles and responsibilities in charge, 92% had never participated in a performance evaluation within the institution, 62% did not know the relationships of authority in relation to the position held, 78% did not know the profile to the position he plays, as the educational level of staff by 70% only have a bachelor's degree, 26% have a degree in different specialties and 4% have a bachelor's fourth level. The total surveyed and interviewed agreed on the essentials of the decentralized autonomous government of the Canton the Mana has a manual function which will answer the problem of deficiencies in the performance of the duties in the Autonomous Decentralized of Canton's Mana. An analysis and job description is able to determine an accurate description of all functions and activities to be performed by municipal officials in their area of work will also identify requirements for education, skills or experience. It established the profile of each of the positions of the Autonomous Decentralized of Canton the Mana, also identified specific personal qualities to develop a fee. The proposal was developed in a manual that has the same functions in written and formal individual and important aspects of each area of the Autonomous Decentralized of Canton the Mana, information you should know the human resources of the Municipality to be part of it and therefore what they should run as efficiently as possible.

Seiko Arita

Abstract. In resetting attacks against a proof system, a prover or a verifier is reset and enforced to use the same random tape on various inputs as many times as an adversary may want. Recent deployment of cloud computing gives these attacks a new importance. This paper shows that argument systems for any NP language that are both resettably-sound and resettable zero-knowledge are possible by a constant-round protocol in the BPK model. For that sake, we define and construct a resettablyextractable conditional commitment scheme.

Kun Peng

No abstract is available for this record.

Carolin Lunemann, Jesper Buus Nielsen

We propose a coin-flip protocol which yields a string of strong, random coins and is fully simulatable against poly-sized quantum adversaries on both sides. It can be implemented with quantum-computational security without any set-up assumptions, since our construction only assumes mixed commitment schemes which we show how to construct in the given setting. We then show that the interactive generation of random coins at the beginning or during outer protocols allows for quantum-secure realizations of classical schemes, again without any set-up assumptions. As example applications we discuss quantum zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge and quantum-secure two-party function evaluation. Both applications assume only fully simulatable coin-flipping and mixed commitments. Since our framework allows to construct fully simulatable coin-flipping from mixed commitments, this in particular shows that mixed commitments are complete for quantum-secure two-party function evaluation. This seems to be the first completeness result for quantum-secure two-party function evaluation from a generic assumption.

Philippe Gaborit, Julien Schrek, Gilles Zémor

No abstract is available for this record.

Silvano Cincotti, Marco Raberto, Andrea Teglio

The paper presents the main modelling features of the Eurace agent-based macroeconomic simulator. Eurace is a large-scale agent-based model and simulator representing a fully integrated macroeconomy consisting of three economic spheres: the real sphere (consumption goods, investment goods, and labour markets), the financial sphere (credit and financial markets), and the public sector (Government and Central Bank). Following the agent-based approach, Eurace economic agents are characterized by bounded rationality and adaptive behavior as well as pairwise interactions in decentralized markets. The balance-sheet approach and the stock flow consistency checks has been followed as a modeling paradigm, A set of computational results realized by the simulator has been also presented. In particular, results show the real effects on the Eurace economy of the dynamics of monetary aggregates, i.e., endogenous credit money supplied by commercial banks as loans to firms and fiat money created by the central bank by means of quantitative easing. Generally speaking, a quantity easing monetary policy coupled with a loose fiscal policy has been shown to generally provide better macroeconomic performance in terms of real variables, despite higher price and wage inflation rates. Computational results also show the emergence of endogenous business cycles which are mainly due to the interplay between the real economic activity and its financing through the credit market.

Ravinder Rena, Ghirmai T. Kefela

Fiscal governance is strong only when governments can deliver their fiscal policy in a sustainable way, and are efficiently applied to the provision of public goods and services. This paper introduces the topics of fiscal policy and its potential effects on economic activity. The paper delves the economic roles and potential methods of domestic and foreign debt financing. It focuses on the methodology of fiscal policy for calling and assessing the impacts of alternative tax policies, and debt management requirements. The paper also covers the basic theory, policy and practice of public finance including decentralization and intergovernmental fiscal relations in developing and transitional economies of Africa.

Andrés Molina–Markham, George Danezis, Kevin Fu, Prashant Shenoy · 5 authors

Abstract. Smart meters that track fine-grained electricity usage and implement sophisticated usage-based billing policies, e.g., based on timeof-use, are a key component of recent smart grid initiatives that aim to increase the electric grid’s efficiency. A key impediment to widespread smart meter deployment is that fine-grained usage data indirectly reveals detailed information about consumer behavior, such as when occupants are home, when they have guests or their eating and sleeping patterns. Recent research proposes cryptographic solutions that enable sophisticated billing policies without leaking information. However, prior research does not measure the performance constraints of real-world smart meters, which use cheap ultra-low-power microcontrollers to lower deployment costs. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of designing privacy-preserving smart meters using low-cost microcontrollers and provide a general methodology for estimating design costs. We show that it is feasible to produce certified meter readings for use in billing protocols relying on Zero-Knowledge Proofs with microcontrollers such as those inside currently deployed smart meters. Our prototype meter is capable of producing these readings every 10 seconds using a $3.30USD MSP430 microcontroller, while less powerful microcontrollers deployed in today’s smart meters are capable of producing readings every 28 seconds. In addition to our results, our goal is to provide smart meter designers with a general methodology for selecting an appropriate balance between platform performance, power consumption, and monetary cost that accommodates privacy-preserving billing protocols. 1

Bong Woon Ha

No abstract is available for this record.

Jiang Kezhong

The government administrative expenses has the dual attributes: on the one hand,too much spending is harmful to economic growth,making local governments in a disadvantaged position in competition and doing harm to the promotion of officials,and goes against the macro-policy objectives of China Central Government at the same time;but it can improve the economic well-being of local government officials.Therefore,local governments face a dilemma on the issue of administrative expenses.This paper uses the panel data from China's 30 provinces(including autonomous regions and municipalities) from 1998-2006 to conduct empirical analysis and robustness test of the relationship between fiscal decentralization and administrative expenses.The main conclusions are as followings: In China's institutional environment,with the expansion of local government fiscal expenditure discretion,the overall effect is the increase of administrative expenses.There is a significant positive correlation between the number of administrative staff and the amount of administrative expenses.The level of regional economic development,resource endowments,and social structure has significant impact on local government administrative expenses.In the context of public finance reform,the other items of public expenditure(except for social security expenditure) have significant crowding out effect on administrative expenses.

Ju Sang Hyeon

No abstract is available for this record.

Rafael Pass, Wei-Lung Dustin Tseng, Muthuramakrishnan Venkitasubramaniam

No abstract is available for this record.