Governments in low-income countries are increasingly integrating off-grid electricity provision into national electrification strategies, creating novel, decentralized markets for electricity. This paper studies a highly decentralized product that plays an important role in energy access: pay as...

In response to the challenges posed by an increasingly decentralized energy system characterized by a high penetration of renewable energy sources, grid operators are experiencing heightened pressure to effectively manage grid congestion. Concurrently, both the European Union as well as the...

This study investigates the dynamics of healthcare mobility in Italy, where citizens have the freedom to access medical treatment across regions. More than half a million patients, primarily from the Southern regions, engage in healthcare mobility, resulting in a total inter-regional transfer of...

This paper examines the fiscal and extra-fiscal effects of decentralizing the collection of Brazil's rural land tax from the federal level to local governments. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we assess the impact of local tax enforcement on revenue, land use, and...

In recent decades, decentralization reforms have surged across the Global South, aiming to bring governance closer to citizens. Despite extensive debate on their effectiveness, systematic methods to assess local government performance remain underexplored, particularly in data-constrained...

The Philippines embraced a devolution agenda in 1991, leading to the enactment of the Local Government Code (LGC). Despite over three decades of implementation, devolution has remained incomplete, giving rise to the blurred accountability between the national government and local governments...

Purpose - The current scenario shows increased adoption of off-chain voting applications in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to avoid complexity and costs for user engagement in their governance. This paper aims to comprehend the trends and patterns within the DAO community with...

The incidence of patronage can vary widely across levels of government within a country. We present evidence of this in the context of Brazil, which has been the focus of most recent research on patronage. In particular, we find that bureaucratic turnover follows political cycles among municipal...

This paper revisits the old theses of the contrasting paths to modernization between Japan and China. It develops a new analytical framework regarding the role of ideology and ideological change - Meiji Japan's decisive turn towards the West pitted against Qing China's lethargic response to...

This paper explores the impact of Society 5.0, a Japanese initiative that integrates digital and physical spaces to address societal challenges and drive economic growth. It examines the role of decentralized technologies in enhancing e-commerce by adapting to consumer behavior changes and...

This paper presents a thorough examination of centralized use of a decentralized technology (blockchain) in monetary and financial systems at the national level. A comparative study is conducted to summarize the regulatory and legislative frameworks of currency/asset tokenization in seven major...