Economic Integration and Fiscal Decentralization: Evidence from OECD Countries

Drawing on recent work on the creation and breakup of countries, this paper examines the impact of economic and political integration on the vertical government structure. It argues that by increasing the market size and the benefits from the decentralized provision of public goods, integration might have triggered the recent process of fiscal decentralization in OECD countries. Based on a theoretical framework, the empirical panel analysis relates the degree of public sector decentralization to economic and European integration, controlling for inter-regional heterogeneity, economies of scale, and institutions. The results found mostly support a decentralizing effect of economic and European integration, particularly in the context of preference heterogeneity, whereas participation of sub-national governments in central decision-making is associated with increasing centralization. --Fiscal Decentralization,Economic Integration,European Union,?Sandwich? Hypothesis

Economic Integration and Fiscal Decentralization: Evidence from OECD Countries

Drawing on recent work on the creation and breakup of countries, this paper examines the impact of economic and political integration on the vertical government structure. It argues that by increasing the market size and the benefits from the decentralized provision of public goods, integration might have triggered the recent process of fiscal decentralization in OECD countries. Based on a theoretical framework, the empirical panel analysis relates the degree of public sector decentralization to economic and European integration, controlling for inter-regional heterogeneity, economies of scale, and institutions. The results found mostly support a decentralizing effect of economic and European integration, particularly in the context of preference heterogeneity, whereas participation of sub-national governments in central decision-making is associated with increasing centralization

A Cybernetic Paradigm for Organizational Assessment

The main purpose of this paper is to focus attention in organizations on a cybernetic viewpoint. From this point of view organization and planning are homologous. What a system does does not depend on what it would like to do. A system does what its organization allows it to do, no more, no less. The organization of a system in one way or another represents a measure of the level of environmental situations that it is capable of controlling. The criterion of effectiveness is viability in the long run. To make this criterion of assessment operational, I shall elucidate my concept of organization as opposed to an institution, and provide a cybernetic language to refer to complexity and control. The basic elements of the analysis are variety, or the number of possible states of a system, Ashby's law of requisite variety or the fact that variety can only be absorbed by variety and Beer's organizational model of any viable system. Under this conceptual framework three steps are developed to analyze organizational effectiveness, and they are presented in order of generality. The first is the organizational consistency. It is in general a metasystemic analysis of relevant institutions and their subsystems. Is it possible or not for them, considering their metasystemic relationships, to fulfill their "established purposes"? The second step after testing the consistency is the structural effectiveness. It is concerned with the distribution of variety along the organizational structure. Some structures are more effective than others in matching environmental variety. This step is concerned with the traditional dichotomy -- centralization versus decentralization. The third step is the organizational epistemology or the particular way in which systems acquire knowledge about their relevant environment. The necessary filtering of complexity suggests that systems select a set of variables or quantities which define the system-environment area of stability

A Model to Support IT Infrastructure Planning and the Allocation of IT Governance Authority

Information technology (IT) requires a significant investment, involving up to 10.5% of revenue for some firms. Managers responsible for aligning IT investments with their firm\u27s strategy seek to minimize technology costs, while ensuring that the IT infrastructure can accommodate increasing utilization, new software applications, and modifications to existing software applications. It becomes more challenging to align IT infrastructure and IT investments with firm strategy when firms operate in multiple geographic markets, because the firm faces different competitive positions and unique challenges in each market. We discussed these challenges with IT executives at four Forbes Global 2000 firms headquartered in Northern Europe. We build on interviews with these executives to develop a discrete-time, finite-horizon Markov decision model to identify the most economically-beneficial IT infrastructure configuration from a set of alternatives. While more flexibility is always better (all else equal) and lower cost is always better (all else equal), our model helps firms evaluate the tradeoff between flexibility and cost given their business strategy and corporate structure. Our model supports firms in the decision process by incorporating their data and allowing firms to include their expectations of how future business conditions may impact the need to make IT changes. Because the model is flexible enough to accept parameters across a range of business strategies and corporate structures, the model can help inform decisions and ensure that design choices are consistent with firm strategy

Defining the Information Security Posture: An Empirical Examination of Structure, Integration, and Managerial Effectiveness

The discipline of information security management is still in its infancy as evidenced by the lack of empirical scholarly work in this area. Most research within the information security domain focuses on specific technologies and algorithms and how it impacts the principles of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. But, an important area receiving little attention is the antecedents of effective information security management at the organizational level (Stanton, Guzman, Stam & Caldera, 2003). The little empirical research that has been conducted in this area has shown that information security management in many organizations is poor (Baskerville, 1993; Shimeall & McDermott, 1999). Several researchers have identified the need for methods to measure the organization-wide information security posture of organizations (Eloff & Von Solms, 2000; James, 1996). This dissertation attempts to measure the organization-wide information security posture by examining benchmark variables that assess role, planning orientation, and performance structure within the organization. Through this conceptualization of an organization's information security posture, a means is presented to measure overall information security and how it impacts the effective utilization of information security strategies. The presence of the dependent variable, effectiveness, gives academics and practitioners a success measure which can guide more effective decision making in the information security domain. An additional aim of this dissertation is to empirically examine the influence of management practices and decisions on effective use of information security strategies within the organization. The issues of centralization versus decentralization of information security activities will be evaluated along with its impact on information security posture of organizations and the effectiveness of the organization's information security strategies. Data was collected from 119 IT and information security executives. Results show that how the organization structures information security activities is not correlated with more effective utilization of information security strategies. Meanwhile, the organization's information security posture is significantly correlated with more effective utilization of information security strategies. The implications of this research is discussed

Consensus Algorithms of Distributed Ledger Technology -- A Comprehensive Analysis

The most essential component of every Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is the Consensus Algorithm (CA), which enables users to reach a consensus in a decentralized and distributed manner. Numerous CA exist, but their viability for particular applications varies, making their trade-offs a crucial factor to consider when implementing DLT in a specific field. This article provided a comprehensive analysis of the various consensus algorithms used in distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and blockchain networks. We cover an extensive array of thirty consensus algorithms. Eleven attributes including hardware requirements, pre-trust level, tolerance level, and more, were used to generate a series of comparison tables evaluating these consensus algorithms. In addition, we discuss DLT classifications, the categories of certain consensus algorithms, and provide examples of authentication-focused and data-storage-focused DLTs. In addition, we analyze the pros and cons of particular consensus algorithms, such as Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS), Bonded Proof of Stake (BPoS), and Avalanche. In conclusion, we discuss the applicability of these consensus algorithms to various Cyber Physical System (CPS) use cases, including supply chain management, intelligent transportation systems, and smart healthcare.Comment: 50 pages, 20 figure

Limited Bandwidth Wireless Communication Strategies for Structural Control of Seismically Excited Shear Structures

Structural control is used to mitigate unwanted vibrations in structures when large excitations occur, such as high winds and earthquakes. To increase reliability and controllability in structural control applications, engineers are making use of semi-active control devices. Semi-active control gives engineers greater control authority over structural response versus passive controllers, but are less expensive and more reliable than active devices. However, the large numbers of actuators required for semi-active structural control networks introduce more cabling within control systems leading to increased cost. Researchers are exploring the use of wireless technology for structural control to cut down on the installation cost associated with cabling. However wireless communication latency (time delays in data transmissions) can be a barrier to full acceptance of wireless technology for structural control. As the number of sensors in a control network grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to transmit all sensor data during a single control step over the fixed wireless bandwidth. Because control force calculations rely on accurate state measurements or estimates, the use of strategic bandwidth allocation becomes more necessary to provide good control performance. The traditional method for speeding up the control step in larger wireless networks is to spatially decentralize the network into multiple subnetworks, sacrificing communication for speed. This dissertation seeks to provide an additional approach to address the issue of communication latency that may be an alternative, or even a supplement, to spatial decentralization of the control network. The proposed approach is to use temporal decentralization, or the decentralization of the control network over time, as opposed to space/location. Temporal decentralization is first presented with a means of selecting and evaluating different communication group sizes and wireless unit combinations for staggered temporal group communication that still provide highly accurate state estimates. It is found that, in staggered communication schemes, state estimation and control performance are affected by the network topology used at each time step with some sensor combinations providing more useful information than others. Sensor placement theory is used to form sensor groups that provide consistently high-quality output information to the network during each time step, but still utilize all sensors. If the demand for sensors to communicate data outweighs the available bandwidth, traditional temporal and spatial approaches are no longer feasible. This dissertation examines and validates a dynamic approach for bandwidth allocation relying on an extended, autonomous and controller-aware, carrier sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) protocol. Stochastic parameters are derived to strategically alter back-off times in the CSMA/CD algorithm based on nodal observability and output estimation error. Inspired by data fusion approaches, this second study presents two different methods for neighborhood state estimation using a dynamic form of measurement-only fusion. To validate these wireless structural control approaches, a small-scale experimental semi-active structural control testbed is developed that captures the important attributes of a full-scale structure

Toward a contingency theory of organizational effectiveness

The general objective of this dissertation was to enhance the understanding of organizational effectiveness by clarifying contingency theory. Key concepts, hypotheses, and models were explicated and selected contingency hypotheses were tested;Major accomplishments were made relative to clarifying contingency concepts. It was shown that the environment can be conceptualized in terms of two major components, the objective environmental suprasystem and the subjective environment. Subsystems of the organization were identified, with emphasis placed on clarifying the meanings of structural dimensions. Organizational effectiveness was defined in terms of the criteria of one internal organizational constituent, the administrators, and two external constituent groups, public representatives and clientele;Major contributions were provided toward clarifying contingency models. Generally, contingency models consist of those which pertain to either environmental or technological contingencies. Only the first group of contingency variants were given major consideration. Environmental contingency models were further differentiated in terms of traditional models which focus on the objective environment and contrasting variants which emphasize the subjective environment;Traditional contingency theory concentrated on resolving the Weberian-human relations argument. One traditional variant is the moderator model which treats objective environmental variables as moderators and examines the different effects of the moderators on relationships between structural and effectiveness variables. The second major variant is the consonance model. It consists of a general hypothesis which posits that organizations with structural characteristics consonant with their environmental characteristics will be more effective than organizations with dissonant environmental-structural configurations;Moderator and consonance hypotheses utilizing objective and subjective environmental concepts and three effectiveness criteria were tested. Also, relationships among environmental concepts were examined. Virtually no support was found for the contingency theory of organizational effectiveness