Blockchain Papers

Chaim Fershtman

No abstract is available for this record.

Uffe Haagerup

No abstract is available for this record.

Vladimir Plotkin, JovanE. Howe

No abstract is available for this record.

Alan J. Tomkins, David Pitt

The relationship in this article was discovered by Alan Tomkins and the proof supplied by David Pitt. The original inspiration was the statistical study of gambling systems—one method of attempting to win being to increase the amount staked each time you lose. The idea of this is that when you eventually win the amount won is sufficient to more than offset the losses on the preceding string of losers and put you back into the black. The snag is that this string of losers can leave you with insufficient funds to keep increasing the stake as necessary. The question which comes to mind is: in a given number of races, on how many occasions are we to expect a run of losers of a certain length?

Dennis Hale

The property tax has perplexed and frustrated economists for decades, and for most of this century it has been denounced as an unjustifiable relic of the Middle Ages, which has unaccountably survived into modern times. The property tax is in fact the oldest tax in any modern system of public finance, and because of its age it has been associated with both modern and premodern tax philosophies. This essay explores the political context of the property tax in its medieval and modern settings--i.e., before and after the seventeenth-century revolution in political philosophy that gave birth to liberalism and "political economy." That revolution altered our understanding of the purpose of the state, bringing corresponding changes to our understanding of public finance. The modern property tax is a legacy of that revolution. But the modern property tax is mostly a legal facade, concealing a very different tax behind it. The de facto property tax, made possible by decentralized administration and by informal and illegal assessment procedures, carries forward into modern times much of the tax in its premodern form. When Seligman and other economists denounced the property tax as "medieval," therefore, they were more right than they knew. It is argued here that many of the problems associated with contemporary property taxation are traceable to this confusion between the "legal" and the "real" property taxes, and that the public might be better served by a tax openly based on premodern principles.

John Heritage

No abstract is available for this record.

Michael J. Fischer, Nancy A. Lynch, Michael S. Paterson

The consensus problem involves an asynchronous system of processes, some of which may be unreliable. The problem is for the reliable processes to agree on a binary value. In this paper, it is shown that every protocol for this problem has the possibility of nontermination, even with only one faulty process. By way of contrast, solutions are known for the synchronous case, the “Byzantine Generals” problem.

Richard Carter, Charles Beaudelaire

Abstract: This paper focuses on the degree of financial independence of local governments in the province of Quebec. The author shows that even if the Municipal Finance Reform (Bill 57) succeeded in achieving its goals, the level of financial dependence of local governments in Quebec remains among the highest in North America. Scenarios for further decentralization of financing and spending powers in Quebec are then briefly investigated. Sommaire. Cet essai discute de l'autonomie financière des localités québécoises. L'auteur souligne que mm̌ si la réforme de la fiscalitë municipale (Loi 57) a atteint ses objectifs, le degré d'autonomie financière des localités au Qukbec demeure un des plus faibles en Amérique du Nord. Plusieurs scénarios sont présentés dans l'optique d'une plus grande décentralisation des pouvoirs de financement et de dépense au Québec. “… N'est‐ce pas une chose véritablement stupéfiante de voir une nation, plusieurs nations, toute l'humanité bientôt, dire à ses sages, à ses sorciers:” Je vous aime‐rai et je vous ferai grands, si vous me persuadez que nous progressons sans le vouloir, inévitablement ‐ en dormant; débarrassez‐vous de la responsabilité, voilez pour nous l'humiliation des comparaisons, sophistiquez l'histoire, et vous pourrez vous appeler les sages des sages 1 .“

Abhijit Datta

No abstract is available for this record.

K. Mani Chandy, Leslie Lamport

This paper presents an algorithm by which a process in a distributed system determines a global state of the system during a computation. Many problems in distributed systems can be cast in terms of the problem of detecting global states. For instance, the global state detection algorithm helps to solve an important class of problems: stable property detection. A stable property is one that persists: once a stable property becomes true it remains true thereafter. Examples of stable properties are “computation has terminated,” “ the system is deadlocked” and “all tokens in a token ring have disappeared.” The stable property detection problem is that of devising algorithms to detect a given stable property. Global state detection can also be used for checkpointing.

Daniel Tarschys

ABSTRACT Nearly every OECD country has faced a scissors crisis in public finance since the worldwide depression of the mid-1970s; in slow growth economies public spending has been rising faster than tax revenues. In response, a great variety of methods have been employed to control public spending. Governments have sought to: impose global ceilings on spending; modify indexation rules; decentralize decremental decisions among government agencies; improve cash flow management; devise balanced packages; introduce new constitutional rules; provide incentives for retrenchment; and privatize public sector activities. Efforts to impose cuts in spending have been directed at the bureaucracy; transfer payments; subsidies; local and regional government; and quangos. The conclusion emphasizes that retrenchment policy presupposes a shift in the balance of power between guardians and spenders.

Gu Dazhi, R.I. Tanner

No abstract is available for this record.

N S Srinivasan, V. Setty Pendakur

India's urban population will double in the 20 years between 1981 and 2001 and could then be as high as 350 million. The 12 cities already having over one million population are growing the fastest and the trends indicate that by the turn of the century there will be 5 megalopolitan areas of over ten million, 20 cities with more than one million and over 600 cities with over 100,000 people. Public transit is expected to handle about 75 percent of the travel in these cities. Like most developing countries, the urban form in India and road networks are not suited for modern traffic. It is concluded that: (1) Decongestion of core areas must be achieved while planned growth and provision of transport be part of urban planning; (2) Transport supply must be augmented while travel demand is reduced; (3) The predominance of low-income population makes public transport of utmost importance; (4) Pedestrians and cyclists must be considered as significant and inalienable traffic units; (5) Area development must include optimization of existing traffic facilities; (6) Transport mode planning must be part of an overall plan to achieve complementary road-rail coordination; (7) Operations research must be applied to every phase of public transit operations and planning; (8) Long-term financing must be established for long-term transit projects; (9) Planning of transport facilities must be geared to overall urban policy of scientific decentralization.

G. STAKE, B. SMEVIK

No abstract is available for this record.

James W. Guthrie

Recent U.S. economic instability has had a significant but unanticipated policy consequence for education. Unusually high rates of inflation in the late 1970s and a subsequent recession did not lead to serious erosion nationally in resources allocated for education. The decentralized manner in which education is financed in the United States and enrollment declines buffered schools and colleges more than most other social service sectors. By 1985 both K–12 grade school systems and postsecondary institutions had generally recouped financial support. However, persistent economic uncertainty fueled by continuing conditions such as high federal deficits, nagging unemployment, foreign trade imbalances, and growing overseas borrowings has evoked intensified public faith in education as a means for regaining U.S. economic vitality. Current reform efforts intended to make education more rigorous and productive are one of the outcomes.

Gary D. Wekkin

Democratic and Republican efforts at party renewal have differed in approach, but both can be recognized as intergovernmental phenomena having significant implications for American federalism. The Democratic Party's national charter and delegate selection rules, for instance, have federalized the governing structure of the party. The national Republican Party organization has developed such a large base of financial resources andcampaign services that state Republican parties and candidate committees have begun to accept national party authority along with its money. Moreover, as national, state, and local parties and candidates increasingly coordinate their delegate selection, finance, and other campaigh activities, they may transform the decentralized party system that has been a protector of state and local influence within the federal government. National ideological constituencies within both party organizations may rival territorial and functional constituencies for the attention of federal elected officials.

Louis Branges

No abstract is available for this record.

Jürgen Mittelstraß

No abstract is available for this record.

Donna E. Parmelee

No abstract is available for this record.

Donald Brenneis

n Sound as Social Structure Feld (1984) issued a compelling call for qualitative comparison in ethnomusicology. His article on the Kaluli and Roseman's (1984) on the Temiar demonstrate the complexities and internal diversity of particular musical traditions and the great difficulty of finding a comparative language that neither caricatures nor obscures those traditions. suggesting a framework for comparative sociomusicology, Feld stresses the importance of drawing extensively upon local theories of self, society, aesthetics and the natural world. How those with whom we work conceptualize and enact their lives-both musical and social-necessarily informs how we come to share in their understandings, although this recognition is often lost in the scholarly drive to move from specifics to the universal. The Kaluli and Temiar are fortunate in their chroniclers. The richness and particularity of each musical tradition are striking; we are forced, as we should be, to take them on their own terms. That the musical issues at stake are so complex should not, however, lead us to assume that questions of social characterization are any less problematic. Feld points to one of the major dangers, that of relying upon notions of objectified social structures (405). A subtler but potentially more consequential difficulty lies in the interplay between those two societies, which were represented in a recent symposium,' and the theoretical position argued by at least one of the respondents. Keil (1984) quotes Diamond: In societies the superstructure is not reducible to the economic base; that reductive process begins with the exploitative economic relations of civilization (1984:446). The Temiar and Kaluli cases are cited as proof of this argument, and they indeed demonstrate elegantly complex patterns of economic, social and esthetic integration. The danger lies in the possible assumption, suggested by the quote from Diamond, that the Temiar and Kaluli as primitive societies represent a pre-civilized egalitarianism and that subsequent types of social formation-necessarily inegalitarian-cannot encompass an analogous interpenetration of economic, social and esthetic institutions.

Jacob Naor

Hungry has since 1968 been in the vanguard of reform movements unfolding in the east-bloc countries. With the exception of reform measures in Yugoslavia, the measures introduced in Hungary in 1968 represent the most radical central system changes of any of the countries belonging to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). These changes firmly establish the foundations for what can be characterized as a socialist market economy in Hungary. The purpose of this article is to report on a most recent and bold development in Hungarian reform: the creation, as of January 1, 1982, of radically new forms of small business organizations. The available experience with those new organizations as of early 1983 are also presented, based on descriptions by Hungarian sources. Finally, Hungarian economists' and planners' suggestions for future changes and improvements in Hungarian organizations are discussed and evaluated. The success or failure of the measures currently being implemented in Hungary will undoubtedly affect the direction of reforms in other east-bloc countries. It is clearly important, therefore, to assess the meaning of these reforms as well as the thinking of Hungarian reformers on future directions for change. DECENTRALIZATION MEASURES OF 1968 The principal feature of the 1968 reform measures in Hungary was decentralization of the mechanism, a move which significantly extended the decision-making power of enterprises to areas previously reserved for higher administrative levels, such as that of ministries and central bodies. Enterprises were thus freed of the previously obligatory plan assignments and could develop autonomous production and distribution plans. The role of ministries was reduced to coordination and provision of assistance and guidance for the preparation of such plans. Centralized materials allocation was abolished as well. Ministries henceforth exercised influence over enterprise management through the provision of appropriate financial incentives or disincentives, involving such economic levers as tax rates, interest rates, and loans. Indicative planning largely replaced command planning, and the influence of market forces grew considerably. Prices, for example, were partially freed from central control and in many cases were allowed to fluctuate freely in response to demand and supply. Thus, while in 1968, 86 percent of food and consumer articles had an official price, in 1980 only 72 percent of such articles belonged to this category. Similarly, in the metal-technical sector, only 13 percent of products were freely priced in 1968, but by 1980 that percentage had increased to more than two thirds. Market socialism seems an apt characterization of a system that increasingly attempted to blend central guidance with local enterprise autonomy and freely functioning market forces towards the achievement of national development objectives. EMERGING PROBLEMS REQUIRING NEW MESURES The 1968 measures were generally given high marks for success, but by the late 1970s new problems had emerged that appeared to require additional regulatory steps. Severe external shocks buffeted the Hungarian economy, particularly the worsening terms of trade with both the East and the West, marketing crises in some major export markets in the West, and the halt in growth in much-needed supplies of raw materials and energy from the CMEA bloc. These negative developments provided the backdrop for additional reform measures begun in 1979-1980, which led to the 1982 small business reforms. By the late 1970s it became necessary to mobilize hitherto unused human and material resources in order to avoid stagnation. Hungarian planners attempted to apply to the industrial sector the principles which led to the successful experience with household plots and small-scale farming, which and resulted in high productivity gains in agriculture. …

Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Charles Rackoff

Abstract. Usually, a proof of a theorem contains more knowledge than the mere fact that the theorem is true. For instance, to prove that a graph is Hamiltonian it suffices to exhibit a Hamiltonian tour in it; however, this seems to contain more knowledge than the single bit Hamiltonian/non-Hamiltonian. In this paper a computational complexity theory of the "knowledge " contained in a proof is developed. Zero-knowledge proofs are defined as those proofs that convey no additional knowledge other than the correctness of the proposition in question. Examples of zero-knowledge proof systems are given for the languages of quadratic residuosity and quadratic nonresiduosity. These are the first examples of zeroknowledge proofs for languages not known to be efficiently recognizable. Key words, cryptography, zero knowledge, interactive proofs, quadratic residues AMS(MOS) subject classifications. 68Q15, 94A60 1. Introduction. It is often regarded that saying a language L is in NP (that is, acceptable in nondeterministic polynomial time) is equivalent to saying that there is a polynomial time "proof system " for L. The proof system we have in mind is one where on input x, a "prover " creates a string a, and the "verifier " then computes on x and a in time polynomial in the length of the binary representation of x to check that

Michael F. Herman, Edward Kluk

No abstract is available for this record.

Vivienne Shue

China's current reform program in agriculture is enormously ambitious in intent and highly significant for all aspects of future economic and political development. It represents a rejection of past policies of large-scale labor mobilization and communal self-reliance in favor of commercialization and individual incentives for peasants. Diversification of the rural economy, decentralization of farm management, production specialization, crop selection in accord with comparative advantage, expansion of free markets, release of labor from the land, and a shift toward household-based, rather than collective, cultivation have all been important elements of the new line. The resultant explosion of pent-up rural entrepreneurship, fueled also by marked state procurement price rises, produced dramatically positive effects on overall productivity, peasant incomes, and standards of living. These led to widespread introduction of even more radical reforms. The recent agricultural boom will be difficult to sustain, however, without worsening China's already serious budget and finance crisis. Today's leadership coalition also faces intrabureaucratic opposition from cadres at all levels who are threatened by the reorganizations, and widespread popular unease about new patterns of social inequality that may accompany greater reliance on market relations. Decentralized management, a wider role for the market, and the vigor of new commercial combines also appear to be hampering the ability of central planners to regulate the economy. Such factors are capable of producing their own political backlash. The new course is, therefore, still a risky gamble in search of a workable balance between plan and market, growth and equality, national priorities and local demands.