Chain Of Transactions Research Articles

A REPLICABLE MODEL FOR VALUING LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS

AbstractWe use the underlying data of the IMPLAN Pro 3.0 regional economic simulation model to estimate the current economic contribution of Michigan's local food system and explore the chain of transactions giving rise to consumption of locally sourced goods from producer to processor to consumption. The proposed methodology includes both unprocessed and processed foods in the estimation of the local food system's economic value. The model also provides a replicable and consistent approach to estimating the value of local food systems within regional and state economies.

Mokesčio apskaičiavimas taikant turinio viršenybės prieš formą principą

With the help of systemic and legal analysis, historical, linguistic, logical document analysis and comparative methods and relying on national law, the works of Lithuanian scientists and legal professionals and tax dispute case analysis, this article, by applying the principle of substance over form, solves problems arising within the context of calculating tax. Using case law analysis as its basis, the article explores the taxpayer’s duty to calculate tax, provides recommendations for the application of a period of limitation for calculating taxes and identifies cases, where the burden of proof of correctness of tax calculation lies within the tax administrator and within the taxpayer. The article provides taxpayers guidelines about how to avoid tax violations. The jurisdiction of the High Administrative Court in the area of tax disputes, specifically in applying the principle of substance over form, is examined in detail.The article consists of an introduction, three chapters (which are subsequently subdivided into subchapters) and conclusions. Chapter One explores the substance of the taxpayer’s duty to calculate taxes and it also includes one subchapter that analyses the application of a period of limitation for calculating and recalculating taxes. Chapter Two identifies which specific participants in tax and legal relations bear the burden of proof, namely when the burden of proof lies within the taxpayer and when it lies within the tax administrator. Chapter Three analyses the principle of substance over form. Chapter Four analyses the application of the principle of substance over form. The article ends with conclusions. The article has been prepared on the basis of the case law of the Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court concerning the application of tax legislation. The aim of the study is to conclude that the principle of substance over form can be applied after assessing the subjective aim of the transaction, the economic content of the transaction, the selected legal form of the transaction and its adequacy for specific conditions, the justification or motive behind the transaction, and tax benefits. The most favourable explanation of the principle of substance over form for a taxpayer is provided in Belgium, where it is prohibited to use tax measures to interfere with the civil legal assessment of a transaction. When there is insufficient evidence to confirm the circumstances specified by either the taxpayer or the tax administrator, a resolution is adopted against the party that failed to provide proof of the circumstances. The following could be the basis for the application of substance over form in tax calculation: failed transactions based on issued accounting documents; intermediate or sham (optional) transactions; a short time interval between transactions in the common chain of transactions or plurality of transactions over a short period of time, when after the final transaction the original property owner continues to hold that property; a great difference between the actual value of the property (services) and the value of the transaction. Abuse of tax laws can be established only when a tax advantage was the main objective pursued by the underlying transactions and the taxpayer’s activities that cause the tax advantage cannot be justified either by economic logic, which is demonstrated by the pursuit of maximum profit at minimum cost, or by other circumstances. On the basis of the analysis of the tax-related cases of law of the European Court of Justice, it can be stated that in deciding the need of the application of substance over form, it is important to evaluate whether there is abuse of the law or fraud (participation in the fraud) in the existing taxation and legal relations and whether there is a concept of fairness. The taxable person can be refused a right of tax exemption if according to objective evidence can be established that transactions, from which that right derives, constitute an abuse of rights, the taxable person commits a fraud or if it can be proved that the taxable person (buyer) knew or should have known that by making his purchase he is participating in the transaction relating to a fraud made by a supplier or other party participating in this chain of transaction even if this transaction corresponds to the objective criteria, which form the concepts of the supply of goods or economic performed by the taxable person.

A Mass Data Update Method in Distributed Systems

Today, distributed business systems are used widely, and the consistency of their databases are maintained by the distributed transactions. On the other hand, a great deal of data is often updated in a lump-sum in the business systems. And, since the non-stop service has become general, it is necessary to perform this lump-sum update concurrently with the online transactions that service to users. So, some methods are utilized to avoid the influences on the online transactions, like the mini-batch that splits a lump-sum update into small transactions and executes them one after another. However, in the distributed systems, since it has to be executed by the distributed transactions, there is a problem on the efficiency to update a great deal of data by this method. For this problem, we propose to apply an update method to the distributed systems, which utilizes the records of data about the time to avoid conflicts between the lump-sum update and the online transactions. Moreover, through experiments using a prototype, we confirmed that it can update data more efficiently than the chain of small transactions even in the distributed systems.

Housing Equity Withdrawal Since the Financial Crisis

The amount of housing equity withdrawal (HEW) has swung from being significantly positive before the financial crisis and recession, to negative over the past few years. The net effect of a chain of housing transactions is typically a large equity withdrawal. The fall in the number of housing transactions is therefore likely to have been a key driver of the fall in equity withdrawal since the financial crisis. There is little sign that, at the aggregate level, households are making an active effort to pay down debt more quickly than in the past.

Inventory management and the safety stock of disposable airway devices

To the Editor, Management of the difficult airway is one of the most challenging situations encountered by an anesthesiologist. Airway devices are commonly used to facilitate tracheal intubation in patients with a known difficult airway or one that is suspected or unrecognized. Current single-use, disposable airway devices include the Clarus Video Scope disposable sheath (Clarus Medical, Minneapolis, MN, USA), the Airtraq (King Systems, Noblesville, IN, USA), the King LTS-D (King Systems, Noblesville, IN, USA), the LMA-Fastrach (LMA North America, Inc, San Diego, CA, USA), the Pentax AWS (Pentax Medical, Montvale, NJ, USA), and Portex Stylets (Smiths Medical, Rockland, MA, USA). The availability of a specific airway device in an emergency situation depends on a wellcoordinated inventory supply chain of intermediate business transactions between suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, warehouses, and hospitals. Airway devices in the hospital inventory are associated with carrying and shortage costs. Carrying costs can range from 20-40% of the inventory value per year and are associated with the storage, tracking, insurance, and opportunity costs of the items. Shortage costs include restocking and ordering costs, and maintaining safety reserves. The basic goal of inventory management is cost minimization. However, efforts to minimize costs may lead to inadequate availability of airway devices to satisfy clinical demand. Hospitals typically reorder airway devices at a predetermined reorder point that incorporates the time lag between reordering and arrival of the device (lead time). The economic order quantity formula determines the number of devices to reorder to minimize total inventory costs. However, this formula assumes that inventory is reordered when reduced to zero. In order to minimize the risk of a stockout and depletion of the airway device inventory, a safety stock level should remain available in the inventory. The safety stock level of a particular brand of disposable single-use airway device optimizes the balance between maintaining minimal inventory while meeting clinical needs during the time that inventory is being replenished. Safety stock level is calculated based on airway device demand during the lead time and the desired level of service, which corresponds to the percentage of time that the airway device will be available to meet clinical demand (Table 1). Although a service level of 95% is common in the retail and manufacturing sectors, service level should approximate 100% when calculating the safety stock level for the emergency airway device. Many of the mathematical tasks in the safety stock equation involve simple arithmetic. The more advanced functions, such as inverse of normal cumulative distribution and standard deviation, are easy to perform with the Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet application. Consider the example in the Table 1. An anesthesia department used a disposable airway device ‘‘X’’ seven times per day over the previous two-month lead time. The desired service level is 99.9%. In order to meet clinical needs without the risk of a shortage and achieve minimal inventory levels, three airway devices ‘‘X’’ should be available in inventory while waiting for new supplies to arrive. This approach, however, assumes a constant lead time. Other approaches to the safety stock calculation using advanced mathematics and tables are indicated when the D. R. Sinclair, MD (&) University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA e-mail: dsinclair@med.miami.edu

Successive retention of funds, loan profitability and marketing implications in banking

This paper analyzes potential effects of successive retention of funds, induced by portions of funds granted as loans being successively redeposited via a chain of market transactions in the same bank, on loan profitability. It identifies sets of market conditions and loan terms under which the magnitude of the fund retention phenomenon could be significant, derives formulae to measure its magnitude, and suggests loan marketing strategies potentially capable of exploiting successive retention of funds to improve loan profitability. The potential role of the loan-induced retention process as an additional explanatory factor in the relationship between market structure and market performance in banking is also discussed.