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How decentralization influences environmental governance is vital in tackling environmental challenges. The literature focuses on whether decentralization is a better choice for environmental governance, but mixed findings exist. This study examined the relationship between decentralization and air pollution by exploiting China’s county-to-city upgrade (CCU) policy from 2006 to 2019. Upgrading empowers new cities in fiscal, administrative and economic matters without changing the political hierarchy. Under the cadre evaluation system, the new county-level city government has a stronger will to control land transactions by directing more land resources toward expanding industrial firms. They attract more polluting firms to promote economic development. This results in the concentration of production and emission activities, worsening air pollution. Heterogeneity tests find that decentralization will induce more stringent air pollution when the new city is located on an administrative border. In sum, decentralization without a supplementary incentive rule has a negative effect on air pollution.

Decentralization is in vogue. However, the relationship between decentralization and local-level development dynamics remains unclear. Does decentralization lead to a ‘reform dividend’ of more rapid development in better-governed regions, with attendant national benefits? What is the impact on spatial inequality? In particular, do poorer regions lag further behind as equalizing fiscal policies at the national level weaken? We address these issues with reference to Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelagic nation, which implemented a ‘big bang’ decentralization program in 2001. Our main conclusion, perhaps counterintuitive, is that decentralization had a minimal impact on regional development dynamics, although its political impacts have been far-reaching.

Decentralized control allows each unmanned surface vehicle (USV) in a flock to be autonomous to some extent. In this paper, the flocking algorithm put forth by Olfati-Saber was improved and applied in the multi-leader scenario based on its original flocking movement. Repulsion was also taken into account in the formation. Subsequently, the concept of neighborhood in finite-range communications was borrowed to control the communication distance of each USV. In this way, USVs could satisfy the restriction of a given communication distance, and avoid collision in motion. USVs might have collaborative tracking of a virtual leader and obtain the distributed cooperative control strategy. Based on the simulation results, the improved flocking control algorithm allowed every USV to accurately track the speed of the virtual leader they followed, respectively. The test results also demonstrated the effectiveness of the algorithm in safe flock navigation, and proved that the proposed control algorithm must be an effective way to ensure the safe flocking of multiple USVs.

A strategic customer is the customer who can intentionally delay purchases and wait for products on sale. In the selling season of seasonal products, there is usually a sale period because product valuation drops significantly. We study the behavior of strategic customers in a supply chain selling seasonal products. Contrary to strategic customers, myopic customers buy or leave, and do not wait. Previous researches with myopic customers suggest that decentralization decreases the supply chain’s profit. We simulate supply chain members’ interaction and learning processes of decisions to investigate how decentralization of a supply chain affects its profit in the presence of strategic customers. We study the effect of customer heterogeneity over product valuation and find that: (i) The profit of the decentralized supply chain is higher than that of the centralized one when the degree of customer heterogeneity is high, the expected product valuation is low, and customers have low time sensitivity. (ii) Decentralization retards delaying purchases of strategic customers. In addition, we find that the endogenization of the sale price can weaken the negative effect of strategic customers on the supply chain’s profit.

We discuss Indonesia's experience in the aftermath of deep economic and political crisis in 1998 that marked an abrupt transition from authoritarian to democratic regime and provided a critical junction for political reform. Among various and oftentimes interlinked issues of reform, we focus on the impact of introduction and adoption of modern democratic elections to political Islam, especially at national level. To illustrate political development at sub-national level following decentralization, we look at the proliferation of district splits and briefly discuss how local political reform made political institutions less insular to popular voters. In doing so, we illustrate political configuration that preceded the 1998 crisis as a backdrop on the importance of political Islam and decentralization in the post-crisis era. We argue that one of the important features of the consolidation of democracy in Indonesia is that both old and political power holders have been going through continuation and moderation processes to adjust with new institutional settings brought by the crisis.

Fiscal competition between governments to attract investment can take the form of business tax rebates, productivity-enhancing public infrastructure, tax holidays, accelerated depreciation allowances or loss carry-forward for income tax purposes. This paper surveys the recent theoretical and empirical economic literature and deals with three issues. First, it examines if the theoretical literature on fiscal competition and bidding races contribute to a better understanding of these phenomena in developing countries. Second, it examines whether FDI inflows in developing countries are sensitive to fiscal incentives and if there is empirical evidence of strategic behavior by developing country governments in order to attract FDI. Finally, it reviews the literature's conclusions about fiscal competition among local governments in developing countries.

This paper uses the Wenchi District as a case study to generate a nuanced understanding of the interactive process between decentralized government structures and traditional authority in the context of Ghana's highly touted democratic achievements within the African continent. Qualitative methods involving focus group discussions of 159 males and 98 females aged between 18 to 72 years in 8 communities were used to facilitate insightful discussions and reflections. The focus group discussions (FGDs) were complemented with key informant interviews (n = 8) and direct observations. Using grounded theory, the results reveal that the interaction between traditional authorities and government decentralized institutions within Ghana's emerging democracy are characterized by competition for power and legitimacy. This has led to mistrust and the inability to take advantage of the potentially synergistic effects between the two systems of local governance for accelerated development. Furthermore, the findings reveal that a predominant culture of fear of authority within different hierarchical levels, is stifling genuine participation, further reinforcing a lack of accountability by authorities from both sides. We conclude that if decentralization policies are to be effective in Ghana, it may be imperative for government to strive for more open governance processes that are capable of blending the traditional systems with the emerging democratic dispensation depending on the context.

Urban spatial structure remains the center of quest and modeling. The decentralization concept is among the leading literature discourses that guide spatial analyses. In line with the decentralization discourse, the application of land-use optimization as a modeling method has grown significantly. Despite decentralization dominating the contemporary spatial analysis literature, no study so far explicitly declares an end to the centers (and subcenters). While centers (and subcenters) are alive, the land-use optimization has never taken this macro-morphological structure into consideration. This case study frames land-use optimization within the agglomeration and decentralization concepts based on the view that no single conceptual framework addresses spatial analysis sufficiently. On a theoretical level, the link is between coarse morphological assumption (basis of economic geography) and decentralization (basis of sustainable built environment). The paper blends these dual theories, one governing urban macro-morphological structures and the other governing decentralization literature. On a methodological modeling level, it blends centers and other discretized uses. Optimizing four objectives across the complete centralization through multiple centers of gravity to complete the decentralization of urban spatial structures applying Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II, the case study findings justify the importance of explicit modeling of the macro-morphological element. It has been observed that multicenter urban forms perform well above both the single center and the dispersed scenarios. It is, therefore, argued that an appropriate approach to land-use optimization is modeling both the macro-spatial element and fine spatial elements. The result further indicates that local land-use planning regulations place the structure of city in a suboptimal state.

This research analyzes the local implementation of China’s central clean water policies over the recent decades. Based on a series of panel data analyses on Chinese provinces between 2004 and 2015, this study empirically examines the impact of decentralization and interest groups on water policy implementation, leading to three main findings. First, fiscal decentralization has a significant positive effect on policy output as measured using per-capita provincial expenditures on industrial wastewater. But it has no significant influence on policy outcome as measured by per-capita emissions of chemical oxygen demand. Second, while increasing environmental decentralization at the provincial level tends to increase provincial expenditures, wastewater discharge also increases. Third, increased industrial contributions to the provincial economy are associated with increased environmental spending from the province, yet foreign trade and environmental petitions do not have the expected impact. The results suggest that China’s decentralization reforms appear to have increased provincial policy responses without improving the actual environmental outcomes. Experiences from authoritarian China may provide lessons for other countries.

Regulation and governance are generally encompassing notions referring to processes at work in cementing the structures of human sociality. Wherever there are concerns of coordinated social interactions, regulatory and governance issues will be in accompaniment. Robust developments in FinTech, pushed forward by progress in ambient technologies, have made decentralization a practical possibility across domains. Decentralization in regulation and governance is a significant emerging perspective for a digital economy.

This paper utilizes a countrywide process of county-to-city upgrading in the 1990s to identify whether extending the powers of urban local governments leads to better firm outcomes. The paper hypothesizes that since local leaders in newly promoted cities have an incentive to utilize their new administrative remit to maximize gross domestic product and employment, there should be improvements in economic outcomes. In fact, aggregate firm-level outcomes do not necessarily improve after county-to-city graduation. However, state-owned enterprises perform better after graduation, with increased access to credit through state-owned banks as a possible explanation. Importantly, newly promoted cities with high capacity generally produce better aggregate firm outcomes compared with newly promoted cities with low capacity. The conclusions are twofold. First, relaxing credit constraints for firms could lead to large increases in their operations and employment. Second, increasing local government's administrative remit is not enough to lead to better firm and economic outcomes; local capacity is of paramount importance.

In this study, we discussed several aspects, including the definition of the general concept of traditional crowdfunding, which aims to finance emerging small projects and innovative ideas as well as financing medium-sized projects that cannot provide sufficient guarantees for banks to obtain the necessary liquidity for their projects. These companies use crowdfunding to obtain this required liquidity for new projects through electronic platforms. In the same context, some of the challenges facing these companies when obtaining crowdfunding from these electronic platforms were discussed, with the presentation of the regulatory framework for crowdfunding in light of Islamic funding standards, which differ from traditional funding in that it is essentially non-profit as much as it targets charitable and social work as well as it regulates the collection of funds and the distribution of profits to the principles of Islamic finance. On the other hand, the general concept of blockchain, its general characteristics, and working mechanisms were discussed. Then, the reasons that may lead to the shift from traditional models in Islamic crowdfunding to the use of blockchain in enhancing Islamic crowdfunding mechanisms were discussed through exposure to the Ventera project model of crowdfunding using blockchain technology as a model as well as exposure to other models of Islamic crowdfunding, where the study suggests that it can improve their performance through the use of blockchain technology as it may bring them a number of benefits and help them overcome a number of challenges. This chapter aims to explore the impact of the application of blockchain technology in Islamic crowdfunding operations and also bridge the gap between the academic side and the applied professional side in the field of using modern technologies, such as blockchain as a safer, faster, and lower-cost alternative in Islamic finance projects, as there are only few studies that dealt with this area despite its importance. This chapter discusses the benefits of blockchain in Islamic crowdfunding with an illustration of some projects as an applied model, after identifying the challenges facing traditional Islamic crowdfunding and the advantages of developing it using blockchain applications; this study ends with presenting models of Islamic crowdfunding projects that can be developed using blockchain technology.

In most industries, the frictionless markets of classical economic theory are more theoretical abstractions than realistic possibilities. In real world markets, imperfect information and transaction costs inhibit the exchange of goods and services that underpin economic development. To help resolve the limiting conditions of the real world, parties seeking to exchange goods and services often rely on centralized intermediary organizations — such as banks, government agencies, and brokers — to keep records of economic activities and identities and to trade on our behalves. In wholesale electricity markets, broker intermediaries facilitate bilateral trades and central power exchanges enable pooled trade. System operators coordinate electricity dispatch. In retail electricity markets, other centralized intermediary organizations — retail supply companies — conduct trade on behalf of customers…

This chapter discusses how emerging technology can be used to build a blockchain-based system for corporate carbon accounting and global climate change management. There is growing consensus that GHG emissions control requires coordinated efforts and collaboration in all sectors and at all levels of an organization. But, due to potential conflicts of interest and lack of trust between stakeholders, it is difficult to achieve the target of capping the global warming below 2°C. Thus, we propose using a blockchain-based system to build a corporate carbon accounting system which can strengthen carbon management. The blockchain technology can also be adopted in global climate change management. Such a system is appropriate for a decentralized climate change mechanism endorsed by the Paris Agreement for climate change. The system fits within existing market-based emissions trading schemes (ETSs). Blockchain enables the integration of national ETSs and corporate carbon accounting into a synthetic and coherent governance framework.

Privacy has become a huge point of contention in recent days with tech organizations, such as Google and Facebook, which make a great deal of revenue from monetizing user data, coming into conflict with regulatory bodies such as the European Data Protection Board. So, there may be two research questions that can be raised in terms of privacy and user experience. First, what are the tradeoffs when using efficient and integrated centralized systems in exchange for giving up vast amounts of personal information? Second, how does this apply to cryptocurrencies and blockchains? In blockchains, each person has a set of identities with which they interact with the blockchain. This means that a user’s privacy will be reduced if their virtual identities can be linked to their real one. Hence, one can increase their privacy through anonymity, masking their identity; can gain access to some service while minimizing how much information they reveal about their real identity.