Nature Of Transactions Research Articles

Readers building fictional worlds: visual representations, poetry and cognition

AbstractThis article explores the complex nature of the literature classroom by drawing on the cognitive linguistic framework Text World Theory to examine the teacher's role as facilitator and mediator of reading. Specifically, the article looks at how one teacher used visual representations as a way of allowing students to engage in a more personal and less teacher‐driven transaction with a poem and to encourage them to reflect on their own roles as active makers of meaning and knowledge in the classroom. The article shows how teachers can be mindful of the various contextual factors that can privilege and legitimise certain kinds of response in the classroom and be wary of external factors and pressures that can promote the idea of preconceived knowledge. The teacher in the case study presented was able to both facilitate the experience of reading poetry in an unmediated way and also develop her students' metacognition in relation to the reading process itself. The article shows how Text World Theory's status as a socio‐cognitive grammar may be of benefit to teachers in understanding the nature of communicative interaction and literary transaction.

Cryptocurrencies and Business Ethics

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, SETLcoin, Ether, Solar Coin, or Liberty Reserve exist since 2009. Because of their decentralized control, they are often considered a threat or alternative to the conventional centralized banking system. While the technological implication of some such currencies, especially of Bitcoin, has attracted much attention, so far there is little discussion about the entire field of cryptocurrencies and very little academic literature addressing its ethical significance. In this article, we thus address the impact of “blockchain technology” on the nature of financial transactions from a business ethics perspective. We begin with a survey on relevant literature from neighboring disciplines. Next, we work towards a 3 × 3 framework for current debates on the ethics of cryptocurrencies (see Table 1): we combine the micro, meso, and macro levels of business and society with assessments of the potential ethical impact of cryptocurrencies as morally beneficial, detrimental, and ambiguous. In addition, we highlight possible avenues for future research, such as the changing roles of the miners and regulators, the prosocial use of cryptocurrencies, the antisocial use for shadow banking and transactions in the ‘dark net’ and cryptocurrencies’ effect on inflation and deflation.

Silence is golden? Evidence from disclosing related-party transactions in China

The significance and the manipulative nature of related-party transactions (RPTs) render transparent disclosure necessary and relevant for investors who infer firm value from accounting disclosures. However, the full disclosure of RPTs may not be cost effective because not all of the information that firms possess is value relevant to financial statement users. This study provides new evidence on the value relevance of additional disclosure on RPTs by using a unique, mandatory disclosure requirement of transfer pricing policies in China. We hypothesize and find that, compared to the mere disclosure of amounts for related-party sales, the disclosure of transfer pricing methods provides incremental value-relevant information beyond total sales. We also show that the disclosure of transfer pricing details complements weak corporate governance mechanisms and improves the prediction of abnormal returns. Our findings are robust to various model specifications, and demonstrate the significance of transparent and relevant RPT disclosure in inferring firm value.

Digitization and the Digital Economy

Digitization has economic and policy implications that go deeper and wider than is commonly recognized. Some effects are paradoxical: It extends economic activity to a global level while creating new value at a sub-microscopic level in the creation and exchange of data. At the same time, digitization expands activity at the meso by enabling new services and business models. It takes economies of scale to extremes while expanding the meaning and significance of economies of scope. It has “accelerated” time, transforming business strategies and conventions for learning from the past and planning from present to future. More fundamentally, digitization blurs and surmounts conventional boundaries in space, time, and hierarchical ordering; it challenges assumptions about the nature and structure of transactions, assets, standards, and networks. The dramatic success of the smartphone, the growth and diversity of multi-sided platforms, and the prominence of Internet giants (“GAFA”) suggest a closer examination of the economic, legal, and policy implications of digitization. In many contexts, the relationship between public and private activity shifts; institutions are confronted by new forms of enterprise that trade on human attention and trust. Digitization not only creates and globalizes markets, it extends markets (often defined by one or two dominant providers) into overlap and contention with neighboring markets. With digital markets affecting social and political values, as well as a vast range of economic interests, policymakers need a clearer understanding of how the digital economy interacts with legacy institutions and policies. This essay describes some core conceptual challenges.

Learning at the interstices; locating practical philosophies for understanding physical/virtual inter-spaces

ABSTRACTVirtual worlds are relatively recent developments, and so it is tempting to believe that they need to be understood through newly developed theories and philosophies. However, humans have long thought about the nature of reality and what it means to be “real.” This paper examines the three persistent philosophical concepts of Metaxis, Liminality and Space that have evolved across more than 2000 years of meditation, contemplation and reflection. Our particular focus here is on the nature of the interface between the virtual and the physical: at the interstices, and how the nature of transactions and transitions across those interfaces may impact upon learning. This may, at first, appear to be an esoteric pursuit, but we ground our arguments in primary and secondary data from research studies in higher education.

Migrant infrastructure: Transaction economies in Birmingham and Leicester, UK

Infrastructure convenes social relations, thereby revealing how city dwellers access shared resources in the context of growing inequality. Our exploration of migrant infrastructure engages with how highly variegated migrant groups develop a ‘transaction economy’ (Simone, 2004) within marginalised city streets, exchanging goods and services, and information and care. In the context of ethnically diverse and deprived urban places, where state resources are increasingly diminished, we explore how a precarious yet skilled resourcefulness emerges through the street. Our empirical exploration of migrant infrastructure is located on Rookery Road in Birmingham and on Narborough Road in Leicester, and draws on qualitative surveys with 195 self-employed proprietors from many countries of origin. The streets reveal transaction economies that intersect local and migratory resources, eluding the categorisation of cities associated with either a global North or a global South. Further, the lively nature of street transactions decentres western-centric measures of economic value. From the street, we develop a postcolonial analysis of infrastructure that relates properties of historic depth (power), socio-spatial texture (materiality) and locality (place).

On the credibility of intersegment revenues and the persistence of segment earnings

SFAS 131 that governs segment reporting requires disclosing profits/losses of reportable segments in multi-segment firms. By definition, segment profit/loss consists of income from both external transactions and intersegment transactions. Owing to the discretionary nature of the intersegment transactions, we suspect that management uses intersegment revenues to manipulate segment earnings. Examining the credibility of intersegment revenues relative to that of external revenues, we find the following: i) intersegment revenues have lower persistence than external revenues; ii) discretionary intersegment revenues have lower persistence than non-discretionary intersegment revenues and iii) the magnitude of discretionary intersegment revenues is consistent with the goal of maximising firm value.

Executive Compensation: A Firm Life Cycle Analysis

This study uses the firm life cycle framework to extend our understanding of firm contracting practices. First, based on the theory of firm characteristics and the nature of firm transactions in each life cycle stage, we document significant differences in both the level and mix of executive compensation across firm life cycle stages. We next use economic predictions of the sensitivity and precision (signal-to-noise ratio) of accounting and market measures of performance across life cycle stages to examine variation in the weighting of underlying performance measures used in compensation contracting. Consistent with theory, we find that compensation is most sensitive to accounting measures in the mature stage when these measures are stable and informative of manager effort. Alternatively, forward-looking measures of performance are most heavily weighted in the early and late stages of a firm’s life cycle when historical accounting performance measures are less timely and relevant. Additionally, we allow the relation between economic determinants and total compensation to vary by life cycle stage and find that stage-specific compensation models more fully predict total compensation (i.e., larger adjusted R-squared, smaller residuals). Finally, we expand traditional excess compensation and rent extraction models to allow for life cycle variation and find our inferences on rent extraction change significantly. Overall, our results suggest that across life cycle stages, firms operate in different contracting environments that lead to differences in the executive compensation contract design. Our results suggest care should be taken in evaluating compensation on a broad cross-section of firms in different life cycle stages.

Measuring economic order in the knowledge economy: A cross-country analysis

The advent of the knowledge economy has transformed the behavior of economic agents and the nature of transactions. In particular, the increase of knowledge based transactions not associated with monetary flows is weakening the significance of traditional measures of economic dynamics like gross domestic product (GDP) or national income (NI). The objective of the working paper is to improve the measurement of new economic dynamics introducing a model that measures and explains Economic Order in the knowledge economy driven by the agents of Governance , Wealth , Conflict and Mutuality . Income, a component of the Wealth agent, is an independent variable of the model. Its maximization is not an objective within the analyzed economic framework. Therefore, income and production growth are not primary goals, but instead they make a complementary contribution to Order . Besides, Welfare is not built exclusively on the optimal distribution of income, and sourced on individual utility and preferences, but on the economic order of the system. The Transaction is the vehicle that constitutes the minimal unit facilitating or preventing exchange within and among the economic agents. An empirical analysis is performed over a cross-sectional sample of quantitative and qualitative data of 142 countries of the world economy in the period 2010-2011. A Logit regression is constructed where the dependent variable explaining Order is an index denominated Disentropy . Lower income inequality (Gini) does not mean a higher level of Order. As an economy achieves more economic order Wealth becomes a less relevant agent. Human development (HDI) is positively correlated with economic order. The Disentropy linear function is normalized to obtain a Cobb-Douglas analogous function. This function is twice differentiable and its hessian is lower than zero evidencing a concave behavior of the Disentropy variable. Hence Order presents decreasing outputs to scale across the considered sample of countries. A ranking of world top ordered economies is listed probably having the following common features among them: knowledge intensive, international focus, small population, homogeneous culture, self-identity, solid institutions and mainly democratic. Normal 0 21 false false false ES X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Tabla normal; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Cross-border payments systems: Regulation, innovation and the impact of new entrants

The global payments landscape is undergoing a radical transformation thanks to the combined impact of fast-changing technology, the ever-growing presence of non-banks, evolving client expectations, increasing regulation and shifting global demographics. In fact, the payments space is changing faster than ever before. If banks are not just to survive, but thrive in this new world of payments, they must ensure that they respond quickly and effectively with recalibrated holistic solutions that address the increasingly cross-border nature of client transactions. This paper investigates the key factors influencing the payments business and examines strategies that banks can adopt to ensure that they remain a driving force as the future of payments takes hold.

Who Loses When Prices are Negotiated? An Analysis of the New Car Market

In this paper we establish that there are large and persistent differences in final transaction prices for identical new cars, and that demographic characteristics explain at least 20% of this variation. Controlling for all observable aspects of the transaction, older consumers perform progressively worse, and this age premium is greater for women than for men. Our results suggest that the complex nature of vehicle transactions leads to price dispersion in this market. We also find that the worst performing groups -- older women -- have the lowest rates of market participation. It is likely that these results are driven by sharp increases in women’s education and labor force participation in recent decades.

Allocation of Income and Deductions among Taxpayers under Section 482 of the United States Internal Revenue Code: Alerting the Courts to the Role of Contractual Interpretation Law in the Transfer Pricing Arm’s Length Comparability Analysis

This article discusses the task of identifying controlled transactions under review by the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. In particular, it aims to alert courts as to the necessary role of contractual interpretation law in determining the true nature of such controlled transactions.

Hierarchical Causality in Financial Economics

Hierarchical analysis is considered and a multilevel model is presented in order to explore causality, chance and complexity in financial economics. A coupled system of models is used to describe multilevel interactions, consistent with market data: the lowest level is occupied by agents generating the prices of individual traded assets; the next level entails aggregation of stocks into markets; the third level combines shared risk factors with information variables and bottom-up, agent-generated structure, consistent with conditions for no-arbitrage pricing theory; the fourth level describes market factors which originate in the greater economy and the highest levels are described by regulated market structure and the customs and ethics which define the nature of acceptable transactions. A mechanism for emergence or innovation is considered and causal sources are discussed in terms of five causation classes.

Potential Jurisprudential Adaptation for the Tripartite Credit Card Transaction from an Islamic Perspective

The credit card represents one of the most important financial instruments at present. The credit card concept originated and was developed in the West under the rules of conventional law. Over time the credit card has invaded the Islamic markets. A credit card transaction does not fall under any of the known financial contract categories in Islamic principles. Therefore, determining the Islamic rulings and finding a jurisprudential adaptation for such credit card transactions is essential for clarifying relevant jurisprudential rulings, as one cannot specify whether a specific transaction is permitted or prohibited without a jurisprudential adaptation on the matter. Islamic researchers have taken great effort to clarify the jurisprudential adaptation of a credit card transaction. This article will examine the potential legitimate nature of the credit card transaction in order to determine Islamic rulings. The concept ‘credit card’ originated in the West and developed under the rules of conventional law. Although credit cards have since invaded the Islamic markets, their transactions do not fall under any of the known categories for Islamic financial contracts; therefore, one must determine the Islamic rulings that relate to such transactions. Islamic scholars have exerted much effort to find a jurisprudential adaptation for the credit card transaction, which is essential in order to clarify jurisprudential rulings on transactions and to specify whether a transaction is permitted or prohibited. This article examines the potential legitimate nature of the credit card transaction in order to determine the Islamic rulings.

An Analysis on the Regulation of Grey Market Cyber Materials

This paper analyzes the grey market for cyber materials by evaluating the current nature of transactions within the market. This paper claims that vendors ought to be required to disclose information (to companies) on the vulnerabilities, exploits, and botnets that are sold. Analyses include: 
 a) Historical cases of weaponized cyber materials 
 b) Statistics on the costs associated with the grey market 
 c) Explanation of risks associated with unregulated grey market activity 
 
 Limitations to mandatory disclosure outlined in the paper include the: 
 a) Culture of anonymity within the market 
 b) Appeal of lucrative job prospects for hackers who rely on the secretiveness of the market 
 c) Perception of risks 
 
 Another overarching, key argument presented for non-regulation is the need for government agencies to preserve their access to tools of offensive warfare that are bought on the grey market. 
 In response to limitations, this paper finds that mandatory disclosure would, at minimum, allow software companies the opportunity to further pursue the protection of their systems and limit the risks of an unregulated market. This paper finds that enabling software companies best serves the interest of overall security and does not completely undermine the ability for government agencies to purchase offensive mechanisms.

Regulating Information Flows, Regulating Conflict: An Analysis of United States Conflict Minerals Legislation.

The focus of this paper is the connection between conflict and commercial activity. In particular, it focuses on the ongoing conflict in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is funded, in large part, by the sale of conflict commodities – minerals, metals, and petroleum – that fund violent groups at their source and then enter legitimate markets and products around the world. Recently, attention has turned to how to regulate conflict commerce as a tool for divesting from violent conflict. In the United States, for example, the recently adopted Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act include a provision addressing conflict minerals originating from this region. The violent and secretive nature of conflict minerals transactions makes crafting effective regulation and policing strategies challenging. As a result the Dodd-Frank Act, like other domestic and international efforts, is designed in large part to discover, gather and disseminate information about the nature and scale of conflict commodities emanating from the DRC. This paper analyzes this legislation while also discussing a number of other current conflict commerce governance efforts. It observes the difficulty of regulating in the context of conflict and corruption and analyses the use of regulation as a tool for informationextraction, information-forcing and information-dissemination as opposed to its use as a tool for directly proscribing undesirable behavior.

Urban markets and diversity: towards a research agenda

In this paper we advocate the study of local street markets to explore fundamental issues about the relationship between economy and society. This relationship evolves over time and we believe that it has been recast in an age of increasing cultural diversity and neo-liberal state regulatory structures. In street markets we can see how diversity and the nature of economic transactions become mutually constitutive. We argue that cultural diversity propels local markets, while everyday interactions in markets influence intercultural relationships. These complex processes are affected by the spatiality of markets and the regulatory environments within which they operate. We conclude by framing a research programme on street markets and discuss a number of methodological complications that would need to be addressed in this endeavour.

Informative content of insider purchases: evidence from the financial crisis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of insider trading on subsequent stock returns in the UK, with a specific focus on the impact of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 on the relation between CEO and CFO stock purchases and returns. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical analysis uses 10,230 purchases executed in 679 UK firms by 1,477 directors during the period from 2000 to 2010. Subsequent market-adjusted stock returns are regressed on a set of firm-specific accounting, market and corporate governance variables as well as the characteristics of CEOs and CFOs. Additionally, the analysis distinguishes between the opportunistic and routine trades. Findings – The findings reveal that the position of the trading director and the nature of their trades are important in determining the impact on returns of insider trades. In particular, CEO purchases are on the whole more informative than CFO purchases and opportunistic purchases. The trades in the post-crisis period have a greater impact on subsequent stock returns. Research limitations/implications – The empirical analysis is limited to the trades made by two executives. Future research should consider inside trades by all directors and distinguish between executive and non-executive directors. Also, a behavioral measure should be developed to test if the financial crisis affected the trading behavior of directors and whether directors use insider trading strategically to signal information to the market. Practical implications – The impact of directors’ dealings on stock returns is not homogeneous. Financial analysts and investors should pay more attention to different types of trades and the identity of trading director. Originality/value – This paper, to the authors’ knowledge, provides the first attempt that combines in the same framework the identity and personal attributes of trading executive directors, firm-level corporate governance features, the nature of purchase transactions and the trading period characteristics. Furthermore the empirical analysis is carried out during a period that also covers the recent global financial crisis period and its immediate aftermath.

The effect of the new revenue standard on client loyalty programmes

The popularity of client loyalty programmes has increased drastically over the past few years, with more than 100 suppliers in South Africa currently making use of them. On 1 July 2007 the IASB issued IFRIC 13 to give specific guidance to suppliers on the accounting treatment of client loyalty programme transactions. In the process of compiling a new revenue standard, the International Accounting Standard Board published Exposure Draft ED/2011/6 Revenue from Contracts with Customers on 14 November 2011 to supersede virtually all existing revenue standards and interpretations under IFRS, including IFRIC 13. Although the effective date of the new revenue standard is 1 January 2017, in view of the nature of a client loyalty programme transaction it would be prudent for suppliers to start collecting data immediately for the retrospective application. Given the time limit and the minimal specific reference to client loyalty programme transactions in the proposed new model, the main aim of the research was to investigate the proposed new model’s impact on the accounting treatment of client loyalty programme transactions. The similarities and differences between the guidelines in IFRIC 13 and those of the proposed new model as well as the specific paragraphs in the proposed new model that are applicable to client loyalty programme transactions were considered. A specific recognition difference and a presentation difference has been identified between the accounting treatment of a client loyalty programme transaction under IFRIC 13 and that of the proposed new model.

An Experimental Validation of Public Cloud Mobile Banking

Currently, financial institutions incur huge expenditure to implement and maintain mobile banking (m- Banking) solutions and this cost is bound to rise significantly, as more customers subscribe to m-Banking services. Cloud computing has potential to facilitate reduced cost, high scalability and a variable cost structure that could guarantee cheaper, reliable and sustainable m-Banking in the long term. While the adoption of organizational private clouds seems natural for banks because of the sensitive nature of banking transactions, some have argued for the adoption of public clouds as a better alternative, despite concerns on issues such as trust, security and privacy. However, there is lack of sufficient empirical evidence in the literature on the suitability of public clouds for m- Banking. Hence, this study presents an investigation of the use of public cloud for m-Banking. A prototype cloud- based m-Banking application was developed using a public platform-as-a-service (Paas) cloud model, which was evaluated for usability and robustness in a controlled experiment. The evaluation result shows that m-Banking on public cloud is viable, if the cloud-based application is sufficiently robust and usable. The result also indicates that m-Banking services on public cloud are suitable for adoption by the banking industry.