Blockchain Papers

William Aiello, Johan Håstad

No abstract is available for this record.

James D. Bentley, J Chusid, G D'Antuono, Joyce V. Kelly · 5 authors

The contemporary academic medical center is a complex organization providing medical and other professional health education, biomedical and behavioral research, and a comprehensive range of patient care services. This paper presents data from the Association of American Medical Colleges' 1989 survey of 125 member faculty practice plans. The survey data showed that 62% of the 74 responding plans were units or associations within the medical school corporate structure. Plans were organized along a broad continuum from the autonomous, departmental model with decentralized governance and management to the group model with centralized governance and management. The growth of managed care, increased competition, and a greater reliance by the medical school on clinical practice income as a financing source are causing the practice plan to expand beyond billing of professional fees. The survey data showed that 75% of the practice plans operated satellite centers, and 61% planned to build new ambulatory care facilities in order to expand and improve services to patients. The practice plans also have adapted to changes in third-party reimbursement and are establishing mechanisms to negotiate managed care contracts involving multiple clinical departments to increase referrals and maintain patient shares; 86% of the plans participate in at least one managed-care organization. The role of the practice plan will continue to evolve in response to the needs of the academic medical center for a cooperative and supportive environment in which to conduct its traditional missions of teaching, research, and patient care.

Alexander Telyukov

A conceptual framework and a blueprint of the health-financing reform have been proposed to the Soviet Parliament by a group of economists and health policy analysts. The draft law offers a new pattern of health financing that is expected to increase both the volume and quality of medical care through raising additional funds, decentralizing health policies and management, providing medical facilities with higher motivation for productive and cost-effective performance, and creating economic incentives for employees and individuals for better labor conditions, pollution abatement, and healthy lifestyles.

Oded Goldreich, Silvio Micali, Avi Wigderson

In this paper the generality and wide applicability of Zero-knowledge proofs, a notion introduced by Goldwasser, Micali, and Rackoff is demonstrated. These are probabilistic and interactive proofs that, for the members of a language, efficiently demonstrate membership in the language without conveying any additional knowledge. All previously known zero-knowledge proofs were only for number-theoretic languages in NP fl CONP. Under the assumption that secure encryption functions exist or by using "physical means for hiding information," it is shown that all languages in NP have zero-knowledge proofs. Loosely speaking, it is possible to demonstrate that a CNF formula is satisfiable without revealing any other property of the formula, in particular, without yielding neither a

Kaoru Kurosawa, Tatsuaki Okamoto

No abstract is available for this record.

Robert H. Freilich, S M White

Increasingly, a volatile public policy issue in rapidly growing areas is traffic congestion. The sprawl of suburban growth, decentralization of urban centers and the shift of jobs from urban centers to suburban areas contributes to traffic congestion. Traditionally, government's response to traffic congestion has been to use engineering, public finance and regulatory control to design and build new highway systems or expand exiting ones. The authors suggest instead that state and local governments use a combination of techniques to better manage land use applications and explore public finance alternatives to achieve a better balance between travel demand, transportation capacity and environmental concerns.

William Aiello, Johan Håstad

No abstract is available for this record.

Lance Betros

This monograph examines the adequacy of the joint task force (JTF) to operate effectively in the context of wartime uncertainty. Military theorists have long understood the deleterious effects of uncertainty on the conduct of war. Commanders never know as much about the enemy or environmental conditions as they would like, so they decide and act on the best information available, however incomplete. In coping with uncertainty, there are proven methods of structuring one's organization to meliorate its effects. These methods involve decentralizing command, lowering decision thresholds, and creating self-contained, semi-autonomous units. U.S. military doctrine recognizes the need for JTFs in responding to the global commitments of the nation. Unfortunately, Service incompatibilities and parochialism often have hampered the joint commander's ability to get the job done. Congress mandated reform through the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986; the result has been to streamline joint command structures, thus making them better able to deal with uncertainty. The experience of multi-Service operations during World War II confirms the wisdom of creating joint task forces when doctrinal conditions are met. My research into two of these operations -- FLINTLOCK in the Marshall Islands and HUSKY in Sicily – indicate that an integrated joint command structure, akin to a modern JTF, reduces the effects of uncertainty by allowing the central headquarters to operate with less information.

Mikko Puhakka, Randall Wright

The authors study an economy where externalities provide an explicit role for intervention and technology shocks generate aggregate uncertainty. In laissez-faire there is too much unemployment. However, the authors show how to support the optimal allocation as a decentralized equilibrium using a self-financing linear employment subsidy. Generally, this subsidy is a function of economic conditions, and they characterize the way in which it varies with the shock. A special case of the authors' results indicates that a simple restriction on technology, homotheticity, implies the optimal subsidy is constant or independent of unemployment. Copyright 1991 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.

Klaus Conrad

The purpose of this paper is to compare the performance of some instruments of environmental policy, using data for a coal-fired power plant. Each decentralized scheme coverages towards the social optimum, chosen by a regulator. We look at the performance of a changing tax rate on emission, of an announcement of the tax formula, of an announcement of the tax formula with a tax refund possibility, and of a tax-cum subsidy scheme. Our emphasis is on full information concerning the tax and subsidy formulas and on the opportunity for the firm to optimize intertemporally. We also test two performance schemes which combine social optimal pricing with optimal abatement decisions. Our interest is to compare the speed of convergence of the schemes, the monetary side payments (subsidy, bonus) required, and to look for self-financing schemes.

E. de Souza e Silva, M. Gerla

No abstract is available for this record.

Wolfgang Peters

No abstract is available for this record.

Kate Brown, Yunfee Kuang

Since 1978, China's economic reforms and her pursuit of modern technology have significantly opened the scope of her hospital services and financing. While the decentralization and higher incomes have given Chinese hospitals new freedoms, they have also raised the specter of new limitations on access to healthcare. The authors review these changes and consider what the future holds for the Chinese hospital system.

Priscilla Wohlstetter, Thomas Buffett

Exemplary approanes to school-based budgeting are examined in this paper. Interviews were conducted with district staff involved in implementing school-based budget reforms in five school districts--Chicago, Dade County (Florida), Detroit, Los Angeles, and Edmonton (Canada)--and with state-level staff in California, Florida, Kentucky, and England. The first section offers a review of literature, with a focus on key school finance issues. The second and third sections analyze the design and organization of different approaches to school-based budgeting and highlight the various ways in which local districts and states encourage school-based budgeting. The fourth section proposes a set of initiatives for state and local policymakers to enhance implementation while maintaining fiscal accountability. The recommendation is made for creation of a partnership between staLes and districts for implementing school-based management, with responsibility varying according to states' different political cultures. Specifically, the partPership would be responsible for specifying the ends of the educational system and school sites would have authority over the means. Four tar)les are Included. (16 references) (LMI) ***************************/!******************************************* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. *********************************************************************** SCHOOL-BASED MANAGEMENT IN BIG CITY DISTRICTS: ARE DOLLARS DECENTRALIZED TOO? By Priscilla Wohlstetter and Thomas Buffett Center for Research in Education Finance (CREF) School of Education University of Southern California

Joseph L. Scarpaci

Redemocratization in the Southern Cone has contended with a fiscally weakened state and ideologically divided groups. Years of free-market military rule have scaled back the welfare state and deteriorated public health care. Draconian cutbacks in public spending have forced private voluntary organizations (PVOs) to provide care for the urban poor. Shantytown health care and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have surfaced to fill the gap created by a shrinking public sector under military rule in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. This paper overcomes some shortcomings of Weberian and Marxian analyses of bureaucratic behavior and empowered social groups through the study of shantytown health care as a new social movement. A comparative review of medical-care policy in Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Montevideo reveals that only Santiago and Montevideo hold promise for decentralization. Neighborhood-based activities in shantytowns remove primary care from the marketplace by decommodifying it. Success of shantytown health care under democratic rule depends on its ability to remain autonomous. In doing so, it would avoid cooptation by political parties and the stigmatized public health system.

Mike Burmester, Yvo Desmedt

No abstract is available for this record.

Bernard Candiard

Selecting a Communication Service Organization : the Ministry of Finance Determining what type of organization to select is a very central question for a communication service and the success of its activities. Based on an initial assessment, what communication strategy should be adopted, which type of organization should be selected, how can central and decentralized structures be connected ?

Pierre Mouterde

Decentralized Communication at the Ministry of Finance With a view to decentralization, the regional information centers have formed an original regional communication tool whose objective has been to make contact with citizens in the field. How have these developed from 1977 to 1988 ? With what problems and difficulties have they been confronted ? An assessment of 11 years of decentralized communication at the Ministry of Finance.

R. Posorski

No abstract is available for this record.

Robin A. Palmer

No abstract is available for this record.

Chien‐Fu Chou, Oz Shy

Economists and policy makers have always argued that the patent system is necessary for a growing economy despite the fact that temporary monopoly rights to innovators imply a distortion of the price system. However, economists have not yet come up with a unified theory to determine the optimal duration of patents. In this paper, we develop a simple dynamic model which identifies two important welfare effects of the patent system, the effect on the incentive to innovate and that of the price distortion caused by the monopoly rights of patent holders. Using this framework, we analyze the factors which determine the optimal duration of patents awarded to new product developers. We argue that the possibility of a finite optimal patent life does not arise in the literature on product development since it considers only a constant returns to scale technology for developing new products. We first confirm the optimality of an infinite patent life for this technology and then show that if the cost of developing new products is increasing with the rate of instantaneous product development then the optimal patent life for economies with a population growth rate less than the interest rate is finite. In addition, we show that for economies with population growth rate exceeding the interest rate, the optimal patent life may also be finite provided that the degree of product substitution is sufficiently high. The patent system can be viewed as a method of assigning property rights to innovators in order to encourage research and development. Theoretically, the optimal R&D level can be tackled using a standard public goods analysis (such as the problem of financing a new bridge) yielding a result that optimal allocations can be achieved at the cost of a significant amount of government intervention. Perhaps for this reason most decentralized societies have chosen a different way to motivate people to engage in R&D, and this is done by assigning temporary monopoly rights to innovators.

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

Alfredo De Santis, Moti Yung

No abstract is available for this record.

Kaoru Kurosawa, Yutaka Katayama, Wakaha Ogata, Shigeo Tsujii

No abstract is available for this record.