Local Transactions Research Articles

Safeguarding Public Interests in the Platform Economy

This article examines the main public interests at stake with the rise of online platforms in the sharing economy and the gig economy. We do so by analyzing platforms in five sectors in the Netherlands: domestic cleaning (Helpling), taxi rides (UberPop), home restaurants (AirDnD), home sharing (Airbnb), and car sharing (SnappCar). The most salient public interests are a level playing field between platforms and industry incumbents, tax compliance, consumer protection, labor protection, and privacy protection. We develop four policy options (enforce, new regulation, deregulation, and toleration), and discuss the rationales for each option in safeguarding each public interest. We further stress that arguments supporting a particular policy option should take into account the sectoral context. We finally highlight the tension between the subsidiarity principle, which would call for local regulations as platforms mostly concern local transactions and innovation policies that aim to support innovation and a single digital market.

БАНКОВСКАЯ ПОЛИТИКА ВЕНГРИИ

The article discusses banking policy in a political system that can be described as “illiberal democracy” (a term coined by Fareed Zakaria), i. e., a constitutional democracy with an authoritarian leadership style. The economic basis of such regime can be described in terms of re-emerging financial nationalism. It leans on the main three pillars. 1) The nation’s monetary sovereignty is consolidated, its monetary policy is becoming more autonomous and guided by the immediate national interests – in contrast to the situation when the proscriptions of foreign and/or supranational institutions prevail and the national government loses control over the monetary policy; 2) distancing of the national government and the Central Bank from the policies of the international organizations that impose credit terms unprofitable for the country; 3) discrimination of foreign actors operating in the country and mobilization of domestic sources for financing the economic development. The authors analyze the case of Hungarian banking policy since 2010 in the context of the concept of financial nationalism. The activities of current Viktor Orban’s government are aimed at expanding interventionism in the operations of the local banking system. Higher taxes levied on nonresident banks made their local transactions unprofitable and resulted in re-establishment of the national control over this system (now more than 60 percent of total banking assets belong to Hungarian entities). There may be some benefit for the economic development in the short term. However, there may be major long-term negative effects of such policy. The fact that the Hungarian National Bank (Central Bank) became less independent in terms of its monetary policy means a significant change from the institutional point of view. The continuing authoritarian trend in the national political and economic governance bears the hazards of increased corruption, slower economic dynamics and decreased international competitiveness of Hungary.

Colonial Virginia's paper money, 1755–1774: value decomposition and performance

Colonial Virginia's legislature introduced an inside paper money into its domestic economy that was, at that time, primarily a barter economy without any government or bank-issued inside paper monies in circulation. I decompose Virginia's paper money into its expected real-asset present value, risk discount and transaction premium. The value of Virginia's paper money was determined primarily by its real-asset present value. The transaction premium was small. Positive risk discounts occurred in years when monetary troubles were suspected, namely worries that the government would not redeem the paper money as promised. Counterfeiting, however, was not one of these worries. The legislature had the tools and used them effectively to mitigate the effects of counterfeiting on the value of its paper money. Colonial Virginia's paper money was not a fiat currency, but a barter asset, with just enough transaction premium to make it the preferred medium of exchange for local transactions. It functioned like a zero-coupon bond and traded below face value due to time-discounting, not depreciation.

STRATEGIC PEASANT AND AUTONOMOUS LOCAL MARKET: REVISITING THE RURAL ECONOMY IN MODERN CHINA

Depending on conditions, Chinese peasants strategically adopted one of two types of transactions: either a single one-time transaction without reference to any particular buyer, or repeated transactions dependent on one regular broker. Based on the different sizes of market zones and responding to seasonality, Chinese peasant households allotted their labour to maximize income and avert risk. Generally, in early modern China, the volume of exchanges among peasants was much greater than the volume of exchanges between peasants and merchants from towns. One-time transactions were dominant not only by the choice of peasants for concluding local transactions but also by the petit traders who connected villages and towns. Thus, price movements in local currencies such as copper coins in local marketplaces did not follow the movements of inter-regional trade made in silver. Maintaining the independence of local trade, local merchants established a system for settlements through account books and issued native notes to respond to chronic shortages of currency. In Japan, peasant households showed similar characteristics of seasonal allocation and division of intra-household labour, but in the nineteenth century were less dependent on local marketplaces and maintained more continuous relationships among villagers as well as with merchants from towns. The differences between China and Japan during the early modern era, when economies depended heavily on small-size peasant households with less specialization, reveals the inadequacy of conventional conceptions of markets such as Smithian growth, which ignore the differences between local trade and inter-regional trade, and underestimate the importance of proximate exchanges among peasants, which reflected their desire for a higher degree of freedom when making transactions.

Transactive energy integration in future smart rural network electrification

Abstract The electrification of current networks is developing to modernize and have a complete smart structure. Rural network electrification as a special part of the power grid will play a vital role in the future smart grid. However, energy management and balancing the supply and demand in rural area have created challenges for the distribution companies. In response to the mentioned challenges, the transactive energy (TE) as a new market based technology is applied to integrate the nine villages and manage the energy exchanging among them optimally. In order to evaluate the effects of TE technology on the rural network integration, three models are considered for analysis of the energy cost of each village and energy not supplied (ENS) in the presence of the renewable energy resources. First model assumed that none of the villages is equipped with renewable energy resources and all their electricity demand is fully provided by the power grid. While the renewable and non-renewable energy resources are considered for two other models. In the second model (individual mode), the villages cannot exchange energy with each other (local transaction market) and they can only connect to the power grid, but in the third model (integrated mode) the villages have an interconnected situation and may exchange energy with each other and grid under the TE management. Simulation results for the nine villages located in India are presented and evaluated. The results investigation indicated that the cost of energy and ENS are improved in the third model in comparison to other models.

The Insurance Industry's Antitrust Immunity

The 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act provides that federal legislation generally, including the antitrust laws, is “applicable to the business of insurance [only] to the extent that such business is not regulated by State law.” The statute was enacted after United States v. South Eastern Underwriters Assn. (1944), held that insurance transactions were “interstate commerce” and thus subject to the antitrust laws. That case had in turn undermined the traditional view expressed in Paul v. Virginia (1868), that insurance was not interstate commerce, but strictly local transactions. The South Eastern case followed in turn upon the Supreme Court's decision in Wickard v. Filburn (1942), which had greatly expanded the reach to relatively local activities of federal statutes passed under the Commerce Clause. Under the McCarran-Ferguson Act Congress thus relinquished its power to regulate to the states, provided that the states did at least a modicum of regulation themselves. The immunity applies equally to all federal statutes not intended to regulate the insurance industry, including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act.As a matter of history, the jurisdictional rationales for McCarran-Ferguson are obsolete. Today insurance is a national rather than statewide industry and numerous companies write insurance in nearly every state. Economically, however, the immunity may continue to serve a purpose. Most but not all portions of insurance industry are characterized by a large number of firms and low entry barriers. Further, the industry depends critically on shared information, including statistical loss data and common coverage, or standardized forms. As a result, many practices that might be misunderstood as collusive are in fact quite procompetitive. Further, as this paper demonstrates, the case law has tended to find the immunity in cases that involve true anticompetitive practices, and they have tended not to find it with respect to vertical relationships, product provision, or other areas where competition was not threatened.

Geographic distance between venture capitalists and target firms and the value of quality signals

In this paper, we examine whether the value of quality signals (patent activity and founding team characteristics) transmitted by emerging biotechnology firms is influenced by the geographic distance between venture capitalists and biotechnology firms. In line with the notion that signals are more valuable to receivers in environments of elevated information asymmetries and under the premise that long-distance transactions present such an environment, we empirically reveal that patent activity and founding team entrepreneurial experience are more effective in increasing venture capital investments when the distance between investors and investees is elevated. Our results, therefore, corroborate the rationale that because tacit knowledge circulates mostly within local circles, it diminishes the value of signals for local transactions, as a priori knowledge about potential target firms is more easily assessed by investors. Our study contributes to the literature on the factors that drive the value of signals, on the literature that studies the function of patents and other forms of intellectual property as a means to boost firm performance, and on the literature on the geography of venture capital investments.

A High-Performance Double-Layer Counting Bloom Filter for Multicore Systems

The snoopy-based protocol is a widely used cache coherence mechanism for a symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) system. However, this broadcast-based protocol blindly disseminates data sharing information across the system, and introduces many unnecessary data operations. This paper proposes a novel architecture of double-layer counting Bloom filter (DLCBF) to reduce the unnecessary data lookups on the local cache and redundant data transactions on the shared interconnection of an SMP system. By adding an extra filtering layer, the DLCBF effectively exploits the data locality of applications. The two-layer hierarchy reduces the storage size of DLCBF by 18.75%, and achieves 81.99% and 31.36% better filtering rates when compared with a classic Bloom filter (BF) and original counting BF, respectively. When applied on the segmented shared bus of an SMP system, the DLCBF outperforms the previous work by 58% for In-filters and $1.86\times $ for Out-filters. This paper also comprehensively explores the key design parameters of DLCBF, including the sizes of top-layer, bottom-layer, and multilayer design. The results show that enlarging the layer filters enhance the filtering rates of DLCBF, while adding an extra filter layer only provides slight benefit.

The Level of Euroization of Albanian Economy

The use of foreign currency is a widespread phenomenon in all post-communist countries of Eastern Europe including here Albania. Relatively long transition caused the loss of trust of individuals in local currency and also in domestic monetary regime. Foreign currency is perceived as a kind of "protection" from the uncertainties caused by macroeconomic instability that characterizes in general countries that pass from a totalitarian regime to a free open market regime. The realities of these transition years have indicated an increasing preference on the use of strong European currency, which, to a certain extent, has led to a partial euroization of the economy. The predominant opinion, in academic and political circuit, is that the advantages of Euroization, at least for a short period of time are profoundly evident especially in developing countries where the aspiration on EU accession is great. When we analyze euroization as a phenomenon, except for the advantages, we have to examine in detail even the other side of the coin, its costs on the economy and monetary system of a country. Since the beginning of the global crises the amount of deposits in foreign currency, mainly euro, compared to the total amount of deposits has increased. How does the euroization affect the Albanian economy? There are three types of euroization and each has its own relevant measure. First of all there is the euroization of assets of the economy, which is measured by the ratio of foreign currency deposits to local currency deposits . Secondly there is the euroization of the liabilities of an economy, which is measured by the ratio of loans in foreign currency to loans in local currency. Thirdly, there is the euroization of transactions, which is measured by the degree of currency transactions against local currency transactions. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n1s2p231

Using Deductive Reasoning to Build a Local Property Capitalization Rate from the Capital Market and the Internet

This paper illustrates a new unique method to estimate a local capitalization rate using Internet data available in every office. It relies on the initial belief that all capitalization rates must begin with a national rate, which is adjusted by local market conditions for a specific land use. A major contribution is the illustration and recommendation of a new approach that relies on deductive reasoning from the national to the local markets rather than the traditional inferential approach that relies totally on local transactions. The conclusion is a new method to estimate a local capitalization rate should be added to every appraiser's toolkit to analyze market rates and values.

Evolution of the Monetary System of the Ottoman Empire

This paper investigates the ancient forms of money in the Ottoman empire, provides money terminology and discusses the history of the monetary system of Turkey. It analyses the problems that arose during the period of silver standard and further during bimetallic monetary system. Gold was the most important medium of long distance trade, whereas silver was more often used for local and smaller transactions. The problem of debasement of money is described and analysis of this phenomenon is given in the paper. Economic history of the Ottoman Empire is viewed from the perspective of the evolution of its money. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n28p71

Distributed snapshot isolation: global transactions pay globally, local transactions pay locally

Modern database systems employ Snapshot Isolation to implement concurrency control and isolationbecause it promises superior query performance compared to lock-based alternatives. Furthermore, Snapshot Isolation never blocks readers, which is an important property for modern information systems, which have mixed workloads of heavy OLAP queries and short update transactions. This paper revisits the problem of implementing Snapshot Isolation in a distributed database system and makes three important contributions. First, a complete definition of Distributed Snapshot Isolation is given, thereby extending existing definitions from the literature. Based on this definition, a set of criteria is proposed to efficiently implement Snapshot Isolation in a distributed system. Second, the design space of alternative methods to implement Distributed Snapshot Isolation is presented based on this set of criteria. Third, a new approach to implement Distributed Snapshot Isolation is devised; we refer to this approach as Incremental. The results of comprehensive performance experiments with the TPC-C benchmark show that the Incremental approach significantly outperforms any other known method from the literature. Furthermore, the Incremental approach requires no a priori knowledge of which nodes of a distributed system are involved in executing a transaction. Also, the Incremental approach can execute transactions that involve data from a single node only with the same efficiency as a centralized database system. This way, the Incremental approach takes advantage of sharding or other ways to improve data locality. The cost for synchronizing transactions in a distributed system is only paid by transactions that actually involve data from several nodes. All these properties make the Incremental approach more practical than related methods proposed in the literature.

Deadlock Detection Techniques in Distributed Database System

Distributed database system provides resource sharing environment for optimal performance of various database activities, especially when data is spread over a large number of sites. Distributed nature of transactions occurring at different sites and requiring resources from diverse sites pose various operational problems, such as deadlocks, concurrency and data recovery. A deadlock may occur when a transaction enters into wait state which request resource from other blocked transactions. The deadlocks are handled in three phases namely deadlock detection, deadlock avoidance and deadlock detection. Various algorithms have been discussed in the literature for deadlock detection and resolution. These algorithms quite often fail to detect deadlock over distributed database. In this paper an attempt has been made to develop an algorithm for distributed deadlock detection at local and global levels. The author have developed local transaction structure to deal with deadlock at local level and distributed transaction structure at global level

Banking, bureaucracy and the career: the curious case of Mr Notman

The cornerstone of banks' internal control was the inspection system that fanned out from the centre to examine all local transactions and records. A critical aspect of the inspection system was reporting on staff performance. Inspection was the lynchpin of the banks' surveillance systems that reached into all aspects of their employees' professional and personal lives before 1939. The nature of this control was revealed by a court case involving a Scottish bank clerk refused permission to marry by his employer. The rationale for this marriage bar lay in the nature of the banking career which was pursued in strictly ‘closed’ internal labour markets. Promotion was governed by professional competence and the organisation's assessment of the individual's personal development.

EBAY OR CRAIGSLIST?: EXPLAINING USERS CHOICE OF ONLINE TRANSACTION COMMUNITY

In this paper we examine users’ rationale for choosing a particular online transaction community. Based on transaction cost economics (TCE), we hypothesize that transaction costs affect users’ choice. We compare different institutional mechanisms ‐ eBay’s identity recognition and reputation system vs. Craigslist’s face-to-face item-forcash local transaction. We also identify other factors related to transaction costs. According to resource-based view (RBV) theory, the size of potential target audience of an online transaction community matters and it influences the chance of making a sale. We conduct exploratory empirical case studies. The findings support both TCE and RBV analyses. Moreover, we discover some interesting new insights that are not part of the original theoretical analyses. One of the potential contributions of this study is that it extends our understanding of users’ choice of different types of online transaction community. This research also has practical implications for online transaction communities.

The Faggāra Enigma: Commerce, Credit, and Agriculture in the Algerian Touat

In the Touat, a group of oases in southern Algeria, local economies depend on outside sources of investment and thus participate in larger economic and socio-political projects. Land and water property are scattered, and ownership rights are complex and overlapping. Local economies are pervaded by monetary expressions that help to create debts, forcing the majority of producers into a situation of chronic dependence. Islamic law is freely adopted in order to redefine local transactions in universalizing terms and thereby to inscribe the local into a wider intellectual and spiritual world. Hence, oases appear to be the result of a movement of internal colonization, in political, commercial, and spiritual terms.

Challenging the Arbitrators and the Arbitration - Getting the Resolution Right

Disputes are an unavoidable occurrence in many local and international business and commercial transactions. Different legal and commercial expectations, cultural approaches, political posturing and geographical situations all form the sources for disagreement and conflicts between contracting parties. As a tool, arbitration is one of several alternative means to a speedy and efficient dispute resolution.

Using the Economics of Certification to Improve the Safety and Quality of Male Circumcision in Developing Countries

Although male circumcision (MC) has been a widespread practice in some regions, while relatively new in others, it has recently ascended in popularity as a HIV-reduction intervention, particularly in areas with high rates of HIV but low rates of MC. However, the uptake and potential effectiveness of MC may be hampered by uneven levels of provider training and procedure skill within developing country settings. Indeed, this procedure that is otherwise considered simple and safe has witnessed complication rates as high as 25-35% in some areas, leaving some men with irreversible injuries. To improve the transparency of procedure quality for prospective patients, I borrow from a classic economics approach and advocate a new application in the form of provider certification. Building on some experience in the healthcare systems and economic rationale of high-income counties, I explore the potential for certifying providers of MC in low-income countries and compare and contrast three models of implementation: government agency, private certifiers and private MC device manufacturers. The hope is that increased transparency of provider quality through any or all three types of certifying programmes can better assist local men as they navigate this otherwise complex and unclear medical care market. As more resources are being devoted to MC scale up, I argue that certification should be considered for incorporation as a means of complementing both current and future efforts in order to enhance the effectiveness of MC campaigns. The two models based on privatized certification, as opposed to having the local government underwrite the intervention, may prove most useful when public or philanthropic funding is volatile or incomplete for a given location. The timing for MC campaign adoption and desired speed of scale up may vary across countries in ways that international assistance efforts cannot always immediately and flexibly adapt to. As such, the role of the diverse MC provider marketplace and accompanying quality-revelation mechanisms may take on different levels of importance and expediency across settings as individual countries move forward with their respective HIV prevention campaigns. The subsequent challenge is to creatively design solutions that are sustainable and applicable within diverse host-country environments and expectations. This is where I believe some economic insights are currently lacking in the MC dialogue. Although I believe the three certification models exhibit much potential for enhancing medical care delivery in developing countries, they are not without their challenges, and implementation would not necessarily be a simple process. Local levels of medical knowledge, public and private resource constraints and the integrity of local business transactions and government practices would likely influence the nature and success of a certification intervention. However, with sufficient model adaptability and partnerships across public and private sectors, I argue that many of these implementation issues could be proactively addressed. Creative and careful certification structures should ultimately improve the MC circumstances across a variety of developing countries.

수요에 따른 교체 우선 순위 기반 모바일 데이터베이스 캐쉬 동기화 정책

모바일 데이터 캐슁 기법은 로컬 데이터 전송 과정에서 속도를 향상시키거나 서버의 오버로드를 줄이기 위한 효과적인 기법으로 많이 사용되었고 모바일 컴퓨팅 환경의 저전력, 접속지연 및 간헐적인 인터넷 연결 등의 제약 사항의 해결을 위해 캐싱 기법을 사용하는 다수의연구가 진행되었다. 그러나 최근 스마트폰이 대량 보급되면서 서버 기반 어플리케이션 등 다양한 어플리케이션들에서 모바일 데이터베이스에서 전송해야 되는 데이터 량이 급증하는 등 문제가 발생하고 있으며, 이런 환경에서는 기존 기법들의 사용이 적합하지 않아 어플리케이션의 서버 대기 시간이 길어지는 등 서비스 품질 저하로 연결된다. 본 논문에서는 데이터 캐쉬의 사용률을 높이고 통신횟수를 줄이고 무선 통신망에서의 데이터 전송량을 줄이고 모바일 데이터베이스 시스템의 성능을 향상시키기 위하여 수요에 따른 교체 우선순위기반모바일동기화정책을제안한다. 또한성능평가를통하여제안기법이데이터전송량을줄이고데이터 전송 성공 확률을 향상시켜 모바일 클라이언트가 대량의 데이터의 전송을 요청할 때 데이터 전송 효율이 향상됨을 보인다. Mobile data caching is usually used as an effective way to improve the speed of local transaction processing and reduce server load. In mobile database environment, due to its characters - low bandwidth, excessive latency and intermittent network, caching is especially crucial. A lot of mobile data caching strategies have been proposed to handle these problems over the last few years. However, with smart phone widely application these approaches cannot support vast data requirements efficiently. In this paper, to make full use of cache data, lower wireless transmission quantity and raise transaction success rate, we design a new mobile data caching synchronization strategy based on in-demand and replacement priority. We experimentally verify that our techniques significantly reduce quantity of wireless transmission and improve transaction success rate, especially when mobile client request a large amount of data.

Synthesizing Global Exceptional Patterns in Different Data Sources

Many large companies transact from multiple branches. It results in generating multiple databases, since local transactions are stored locally. The number of multi-branch companies as well as the number of branches of a multi-branch company is increasing over time. Thus, it is important to study data mining on multiple databases. Global exceptional patterns describe interesting individuality of few branches. Therefore, it is interesting to identify such patterns. In this paper, we propose type I and type II global exceptional frequent itemsets in multiple databases by extending the notion of global exceptional frequent itemset. Also, we propose the notion of exceptional sources for a type II global exceptional frequent itemset. We propose type I and type II global exceptional association rules in multiple databases by extending the notion of global exceptional association rule. We propose an algorithm for synthesizing type II global exceptional frequent itemsets. Experimental results are presented on both real and synthetic databases. We compare the proposed algorithm with the existing algorithm theoretically as well as experimentally. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is effective and promising.