Philipp Obreiter, Birgitta König‐Ries, Michael Klein
In the context of mobile and wireless devices, an information system is no longer a centralized component storing all the relevant data nor is it a decentralized component governed by a common authority. Rather, the information spread across huge numbers of autonomous mobile and wireless devices owned by independent organizations and individuals can be regarded as a highly dynamic, virtual information system. For this vision to become reality, the autonomous devices involved need to be motivated to cooperate. This cooperation needs to occur not only on the application layer, but, depending on the network architecture, also on the lower layers from the link layer on upwards. In this report, we investigate on which protocol layers cooperation is needed and what constitutes uncooperative behavior. We then identify necessary properties of incentive schemes that encourage cooperation and discourage uncooperative behavior. In this context, we examine remuneration types that are a major constituent of incentive schemes. Finally, using the example of ad hoc networks, the most challenging technical basis of a wireless information system, we compare existing incentive schemes to these characteristics.
Section I - Intergovernmental fiscal relations: fiscal decentralization - the provincial-local dimension, Roy Bahl, Sally Wallace challenges of fiscal decentralization in developing and transitional economies - an Asian perspective, M. Govinda Rao liberalization and the spatial allocation of population in developing and transition countries, David E. Wildasin on the measurement and impact of fiscal decentralization, Robert D. Ebel, Serdar Yilmaz comments of section I, Deborah Wetzel. Section II - Tax evasion, tax administration and the role of government: the cost of government and the misuse of public assets, Vito Tanzi, Tej Prakash institutions, paradigms and tax evasion in developing and transition countries, James Alm, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez the circular flow of debts and barter in a transition economy - the case of Ukraine, Wayne Thirsk. Section III - Fiscal policy: growth and taxes - some implications for developing economies, Jack M. Mintz is fiscal stability compatible with decentralization? the case of Latin America, William Dillinger, Guillermo Perry, Steven B. Webb how should tobacco be taxed in EU-accession countries, Sijbren Cnossen taxation of electronic commerce in developing countries, Charles E. McLure, Jr comments to section III, Peggy Musgrave, Francois Vaillancourt. Section IV - a summing up: taking the low road, Richard Bird.
This paper assesses the impact on local government budget of the rearrangement of central-local fiscal relationship under proposal in Japan, or the so-called Trinity Reform, where it is proposed that some of the tax base be handed from the central to the local governments, in conjunction with drastic cut in both transfer of the tax revenue and a collection of subsidies. The tool used for this objective is the Nagoya City University Econometric Model (NCUEi 2003) whose core system has been duly modified to simulate proposals, and also to investigate the performance of the local economy under the strain of declining and aging population. The object case taken up in this paper is Nagoya City.The model is characterized by the market adjustment of the regional total demandsupply balance, where the age distribution of the population is incorporated so as to assess the impact of the demographic change both on the total demand and productive capacity. The forecast and simulations show that while the abovementioned Reform generates persistent unfavorable impact to the local government, the dominant negative impact comes from the demographic change, in terms of the primary balance of Nagoya City. Unless proper measures are to be taken, the simulations indicate, the local government's fiscal soundness will hardly be maintained under the two major pressures, one from the fiscal decentralization as represented in the subsidy cut-cum-tax base transfer and the other from the demographic change. The simulation of the abovementioned reform reveals that it definitely worsens the primary balance of the locality, and implies that practically an additional transfer of consumption tax must accompany this reform, even for one of the most favorable localities like Nagoya where its major industrial sectors, or the automobile-industry-led industries in this case, are steadily growing. The implication will be obvious for localities where economy is less favorable.
In China, the highly decentralized fiscal system undermines improvements in policy outcomes and contributes to increasing disparities among its regions. However, rather than re-centralizing, China would benefit from pursuing reforms to: improve expenditure and revenue assignments for the various levels of government; distribute fiscal resources more equally; and improve the use of these resources through better budget management at all levels of government. This report recommends a comprehensive reform effort that covers all the components of the inter-governmental fiscal system, arguing that selective interventions to address specific local financial problems such as defaults on pension and unemployment stipends, and payment arrears on teachers ' salaries, have created some pervasive incentives. A piecemeal approach to inter-governmental fiscal reform is unlikely to succeed because it will not take into account the interdependence of transfers on revenue assignments or the role played by expenditure assignments on the adequacy of revenue assignments and transfers.
This paper proposes the optimal 4-move ZKIP (Zero-Knowledge Interactive Proof systems) of knowledge for SAT and its application. Using the trapdoor bit commitment scheme and the WI(Witness Indistingushable) and the WH(Witness Hiding), it is shown that as compared with 6-move ZKIP for SAT, the proposed ZKIP is 4-move ZKIP for SAT and under claw-free pairs of functions the proposed ZKIP is also 4-move ZKIP. The proposed scheme is more efficient at the points of computational complexity and communication complexity.
M. Oku, M. Omura, J. Kann, Mario Perrone · 5 authors
An automation system architecture for implementing autonomous decentralized systems (ADSs) called Hi-Cell is described. A project model of human organization featuring activities such as teaming is proposed as an analog for Hi-Cell behavior. Familiar team behaviors such as task allocation, learning, and cooperation are explored in the automation domain.>
If one-way functions exist, then there are zero-knowledge proofs for every language in PSPACE. The authors prove that unless very weak one-way functions exist, zero-knowledge proofs can be given only for languages in BPP. For average-case definitions of BPP they prove an analogous result under the assumption that uniform one-way functions do not exist. Thus, very loosely speaking, zero-knowledge is either useless (exists only for 'easy' languages), or universal (exists for every provable language).>
In conventional digital signature techniques, secret information, which is utilized for authentication, is disclosed to the verifier. A new digital signature system for image data is proposed. This system can be used to assert the copyright of image data. In this system, a graph generated from an image which must has a signature and an isomorphic graph is concealed in this image. The ZKIP (zero knowledge interactive proof) for the graph isomorphism is applied to assert the copyright of this image. Consequently the secret information is not disclosed during the authentication process.
Digital Image Processing Techniques
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Although economical and technological progress has made societies more prosperous, it has also created drawbacks such as poverty and unemployment, and not every member of these societies is happy. The dissatisfaction has led to questions and the re-examination of the top-down approach of central government for planning and management. Recently a new type of society has been postulated, in which the happiness of the individual has importance as well as the prosperity of the group. This new trend will come about through a structural change in society itself. Such a restructuring will be accelerated by information technologies, including the Internet/Intranet, which have been rapidly advancing. Global communication networks enable global communication among individuals and eliminate traditional borderlines around organizations and countries; that is, information sent by each individual flows all over the world and an individual can choose the information he/she needs. The name for the above new trend in the structural change of society is "Autonomous Decentralization" and the author believes that the Autonomous Decentralized System (ADS) (K. Mori et al., 1986) will become quite a common technology in every section or every level of society, such as companies, industries, and public organizations. The paper describes the effectiveness of applying ADS technologies to the structure of our new society and indicates the future trend of ADS technologies.
Juan C. Chaparro, Michael Smart, Juan Gonzola Zapata
For the past fifteen years, Colombia has been engaged in a grand experiment in decentralization. Since 1986, subnational government spending has increased dramatically, as the regions have assumed greater control of health and education programs and other local services, and an increasing fraction of national revenues have been earmarked for transfer to lower-level governments. This paper examines fiscal data for a large number of Colombian municipalities for the 1985-99 period. Our first goal is to describe the effects of the transfer system on horizontal balance among municipalities. By our estimates, the fiscal capacities of Colombian municipalities differ substantially, which is a major challenge to designing an effective system of decentralization. Our second goal is to draw some inferences from the data about how the current system of transfers has affected the level of local taxation and spending, and the pattern of spending across functional categories. Our data cover a period that straddles the major reform in the allocation of municipal transfers that resulted from Law 60 in 1993. This permits a more accurate assessment of the effects of transfers than has been possible in previous research.
Alfredo De Santis, Giovanni Di Crescenzo, Giuseppe Persiano, Moti Yung
We investigate structural properties of statistical zero knowledge (SZK) both in the interactive and in the non-interactive model. Specifically, we look into the closure properties of SZK languages under monotone logical formula composition. This gives rise to new protocol techniques. We show that interactive SZK for random self reducible languages (RSR) (and for co-RSR) is closed under monotone Boolean operations. Namely, we give SZK proofs for monotone Boolean formulae whose atoms are statements about an SZK language which is RSR (or a complement of RSR). All previously known languages in SZK are in these classes. We then show that if a language L has a non-interactive SZK proof system then honest-verifier interactive SZK proof systems exist for all monotone Boolean formulae whose atoms are statements about the complement of L. We also discuss extensions and generalizations.>
Holonic manufacturing is a new approach to the organization of decentralized autonomous and cooperative manufacturing systems. Such systems lead to new requirements for a product model, which can not be entirely fulfilled with today's product modelling techniques. This paper outlines the new requirements for product modelling and presents an approach to a solution based on the use of features technology.>
This paper presents a new distributed decentralized architecture for the organization, command, control and communication (C/sup 3/) of multiple agent system which has to execute a mission, cooperatively and autonomously. This architecture can be applied to multiple unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), to unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), as well as to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), unmanned space vehicles (USVs) or to any other types of autonomous cooperative multiple agent systems. The rationale for autonomous cooperative operation of a multiple agent system, stems from the need to execute critical missions under time, space resources and availability constraints, which are beyond the capability of a single agent to perform successfully. If the system agents are distributed geographically, cooperative operation is a reasonable approach. It supports share of information, share of resources, efficient resource allocation, context and situation driven responsiveness, robustness and flexibility under changing conditions, as well as redundancy. A key feature of the proposed architecture is that all the agents are identical in their sensing, information processing, decision making, communication and mission related capabilities. Thus, a failed agent can be functionally replaced by a peer agent. The architecture is both distributed and decentralized. It is implemented via four major building blocks, which are embedded within each agent.
As a flexible and robust intelligent robot system, we have been developing an autonomous and decentralized robot system called ACTRESS, which is composed of multiple robotic agents who have various kinds of functionalities. In order to achieve a given mission in multirobot environment, cooperative behaviors by autonomous agents are essential. In this paper, we focus on the case that multiple robots execute a task cooperatively with functional complement, especially for sensing function. We discuss cooperation of multiple robots using communication in a multi-agent robotic system, and propose a method of functional complement by multiple agents, including group organization and cooperative motion control. Finally, we show the experimental result to verify the proposed method.>
As a flexible and robust intelligent robot system, we have been developing an autonomous and decentralized robot system called ACTRESS, which is composed of multiple robotic agents. In this paper, introducing an idea of cooperative action with group organization and a strategy for cooperative task processing using communication, a method for team organization by efficient negotiation is presented. The efficient negotiation is realized by a newly developed communication functionality called groupcast and a learning mechanism utilizing historical records on past negotiation. The negotiation procedures for team organization are implemented, and as a result of simulation experiments, the efficiency of the learning mechanism is verified.>
We consider the basic cryptographic primitive known as zero-knowledge proofs on committed bits. In this primitive, a prover P commits to a set of bits, and then at a later time convinces a verifier V that some property /spl Pscr/ holds for a subset of these bits. It is known how to implement this primitive based on an ordinary bit-committal primitive, but the standard implementations involve a great deal of interaction between the prover and the verifier. We introduce new implementations that require markedly less interaction. We implement bounded-interaction proofs on committed bits, generalizing a model of A. De Micali et al. (1988). For all security parameters, our implementations require only a lg/sup 2/ (n) overhead over the best known circuit-based interactive implementations; for sufficiently large security parameters this gap drops to a lg(n) factor.>
The author studies connections among one-way functions, hard on the average problems, and statistical zero-knowledge proofs. In particular, he shows how these three notions are related and how the third notion can be better characterized, assuming the first one.>
The authors describe the organization, management, and process for accomplishing applied R&D for BPA (Bonneville Power Adminstration) programs. The BPA is required to be self-financing. As such, the emphasis of BPA's R&D program is to deliver benefits to BPA and its customers, as well as to meet legislative mandates. Coordination with political bodies, BPA customers, other utilities, and other research organizations is required to formulate and accomplish the R&D as an integral part of three programs: Transmission System Development, Energy Resources, and Fish and Wildlife. Each of these programs has different needs, directives from outside BPA, and customer bases. While the R&D management is centralized, the accomplishment is decentralized.>
Continuous improvement in quality has been made possible by the use of a complete quality program which fully utilizes the knowledge and capabilities of an entire workforce. The program includes formal quality policy deployment, training, a seven-step quality improvement process, and the use of poka-yoke or mistake-proofing devices. It is concluded that employees empowered to create continuous quality improvement have demonstrated that zero defects is an obtainable goal. True empowerment is only achieved by establishing quality policy based on employee involvement, establishing valid indicators, providing training to all employees, and encouraging all employees to use the latest quality improvement and mistake proofing techniques every day.>
The avionics system of Hermes is called spacionics. Spacionics is defined as a set of onboard items which treat, exchange, or store information in electrical form, and provide and distribute electrical power. The main drivers for spacionics design are mass and safety. The spacionics organization depends on the priorities assigned to different criteria. These priorities can lead to either a centralized or a decentralized data processing architecture. It has been necessary to centralize the widest part of the data processing, which is split into two pools of computers, one dedicated to guidance, navigation and control and one dedicated to mission and vehicle management. The first one, made of 4 computers and 4 data busses, is able to perform its functions autonomously and automatically even after 2 failures. The second one, including only 2 strings, requires the implementation of safety protection activated, if necessary, either by the crew or by the control.>
It is proved that, when both randomization and interaction are allowed, the proofs that can be verified in polynomial time are exactly those proofs that can be generated with polynomial space. The interactive proofs introduced use only public coins, are accepted with probability one when the prover is honest, require only logarithmic workspace when the verifier is given a two-way access to his or her random tape, and by the use of known techniques can be turned into zero-knowledge proofs under the sole assumption that one-way functions exist.>
The authors solve the two major open problems associated with noninteractive zero-knowledge proofs: how to enable polynomially many provers to prove in writing polynomially many theorems based on the basis of a single random string, and how to construct such proofs under general (rather than number-theoretic) assumptions. The constructions can be used in cryptographic applications in which the prover is restricted to polynomial time, and they are much simpler than earlier (and less capable) proposals.>