Standard Transaction Research Articles

Assessing the Salability of Timber Offerings

Abstract Given the complex and expensive nature of timber sale planning, timber offerings that receive no bids waste valuable time and resources for the managers of national forests. This article compares several tools for predicting the salability of timber offerings. These tools include probability-based techniques and appraisal-based techniques. The probability-based techniques include probit regression and discriminant analysis. The appraisal-based techniques use various modifications of the standard transaction evidence appraisal equations to predict salability. Results show probability-based techniques do better at correctly classifying timber offerings as sold or unsold. They correctly classify nearly 100% of the sold offerings, which constitute most of the offerings in the sample. However, if the user's primary interest is to predict unsold offerings correctly, appraisal-based techniques outperform probability-based techniques. West. J. Appl. For. 13(4):129-136.

Middlemen and agents in the procurement of paddy: Institutional arrangements from the rural Philippines

Using transaction cost economics (TCE) as the framework of analysis, this article examines some of the specific institutional arrangements that arise when small, village-based paddy traders and local farmers are used as middlemen and commission agents, respectively, to procure paddy supplies for large rice millers, traders, and retailers/wholesalers in the rural Philippines. I find that the institutional arrangements examined in this article generally conform to the propositions set forth in the TCE literature. That is, as trnsactions involve specific investments in capital or knowledge, the governance structure will tend to be specific and bilateral, while more standard transactions are best governed by the market. In addition, this article also discusses why one form of contracting mode may be preferred to alternative contracting modes.

Best practice analysis of bank branches: An application of DEA in a large Canadian bank

This paper presents a best practice analysis of the Ontario based branches of a large Canadian bank. Consistent with managerial goals, the analysis focuses on the performance of branch personnel; it considers as outputs both transactions and maintenance work. To sharpen our efficiency estimates, we use DEA AR models with output multiplier constraints based on standard transaction and maintenance times. A model that adds similar constraints on the input multipliers, based on personnel salary, is used to find the cost efficient branches, and estimate “allocative” efficiency. Special emphasis is placed on quantifying and discussing the impact of model choice on the results. Post-hoc statistical tests are performed to investigate the impact of several external factors on personnel efficiency as well as the effects of efficiency on quality and profitability.

Integrating standard transactions in firm real-time database systems

Real-time database systems are designed to handle workloads where transactions have completion deadlines and the goal is to meet these deadlines. However, many real-time database environments are characterized by workloads that are a mix of real-time and standard (non-real-time) transactions. Unfortunately, the system policies used to meet the performance goals of real-time transactions often work poorly for standard transactions. In particular, optimistic concurrency control algorithms are recommended for real-time transactions, whereas locking-based protocols are suited for standard transactions. In this paper, we present a new database system architecture in which real-time transactions use optimistic concurrency control and, simultaneously, standard transactions use locking. We prove that our architecture maintains data integrity and show, through a simulation study, that it provides significantly improved performance for the standard transactions without diminishing the real-time transaction performance. We also show, more generally, that the proposed architecture correctly supports the co-existence of any group of concurrency control algorithms that adhere to a standard interface.

Paperless Grants Via the Internet

For many years, people have been trying to simplify and streamline business processes by substituting means for paper documents. These means are generally subsumed under the heading of electronic commerce, with data interchange (EDI) being one of its subsets. Electronic commerce has several definitions, one of which is the integration of e-mail, funds transfer, EDI, and similar techniques into a comprehensive, clectronic-based system of business functions (Drake, in press). EDI is defined as the computer-to-computer exchange of routine business information using transactions standards agreed to by both parties. The use of standard transactions originated within the transportation, food, and chemical industries, initially using separate industry standards. Now, in the United States, the standards used are usually those established and maintained by the Accredited Standards Committee X12 of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI); these are generally referred to as ANSI X12 standards. Initiatives such as Commerce Net are underway to transmit EDI transactions across the Internet (Drake, in press). Most of the effort to institute commerce is between private companies. Within federal government contracting organizations, a variety of approaches have been taken to achieve paperless contracting. Electronic contracting is rapidly becoming the norm for awarding small purchases. One very successful application of contracting for large-dollar-value contracts has been implemented by the joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program office, a high-technology aviation project of the Department of Defense. The JAST office, through the fall of 1995, has completed two rounds of multiple contract awards. Each step in the award process--including issuance of broad agency announcements, receipt of proposals, conduct of technical and business evaluations, and award of contracts--is performed entitely through means. No paper documents change hands between the government and the contractor, nor are any used within the government during the award process (Joint Advanced Strike Technology, 1995). While there are certainly many differences between contracts and grants (and between grants and other kinds of financial assistance instruments), there are also many similarities. The general process of issuing a public announcement, receiving replies, evaluating them, making an award, and monitoring the outcome is essentially the same in both cases. Therefore, we can be certain that if contracts can be processed electronically, so can grants. A recent survey found that peer-review panelists who evaluate submitted proposals strongly support preparation (85 percent), notification (75), submission (71), Edward (69), and evaluation (64). Proposal writers were not asked specifically about the desirability of using an clectronic format for their work. They did note, however, that they were dissatisfied with the time now being taken by the paper processes in use and would welcome some form of information technology (Schwartz and Mansir, 1995). Doing more of the work in an format and transferring the documents electronically should allow a more timely process. Much has been written about the Internet, so only the briefest of introductions is provided here. The Internet is a worldwide network of other computer networks using a common communications protocol known as Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). It is an outgrowth of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) work of the 1960s to develop ARPANET, which linked Department of Defense computers. Now, in general, individual personal computers (PCs) in an organization are connected via a local area network (LAN) with each other. This network is then connected to a regional network, which in turn is connected to one or more of the public fiber-optic backbones MacKie-Mason and Varian, 1994). …

Does the market react differently to domestic and foreign takeover announcements? Evidence from the U.S. chemical and retail industries

This paper examines shareholder wealth gains from domestic and foreign takeover announcements in the U.S. chemical and retail industries. Contrary to results in several recent papers, these data indicate there is no significant difference in within industry mean takeover premia levels. There is evidence, though, that the sensitivity of takeover premia levels to standard transaction characteristics does differ across buyers: Foreign investors do pay more than domestic investors in hostile transactions, but pay less when there are rival bidders. The results indicate the market's reaction to buyer nationality is closely tied to the transaction's characteristics.

Towards a dynamic theory of transactions

Standard transaction cost economics (TCE) considers transactions from the perspective of static efficiency. Increasingly, attention is required to dynamic efficiency; to capabilities to exploit transaction relations for innovation. Since innovation is dependent on knowledge and learning, the step from the statics to the dynamics of exchange requires and understanding of the development and acquisition of knowledge, preferences, and meaning, and the role in that of interaction between transaction partners. As a step towards this, the article provides an exploration of theories of knowledge and knowledge development, the relation to language, the role of intersubjective relations, the connection with evolutionary theory and the implications for transaction cost theory.

Evaluation of timestamp-based concurrency control mechanisms incorporating livelock avoidance

A simulation model of a distributed database system is defined; it is then used to analyze the behavior of various concurrency control mechanisms based on timestamp ordering. The model can reflect different network configurations, different data distribution/replication schemes, and different users' activity characteristics. Various concurrency control algorithms are accepted, and their relative performance can be compared. This model is used to show that the standard transaction restart policy used by time-stamp-based algorithms leads to infinite cyclic restarts of transactions. To remedy this problem, three alternative restart techniques are defined and are formally shown to guarantee the absence of cyclic restarts. Simulation is used to determine the relative advantages of the resulting robust concurrency control mechanisms.

Concurrency control in distributed databases through time intervals and short-term locks

A method for concurrency control in distributed database management systems that increases the level of concurrent execution of transactions, called ordering by serialization numbers (OSN), is proposed. The OSN method works in the certifier model and uses time-interval techniques in conjunction with short-term locks to provide serializability and prevent deadlocks. The scheduler is distributed, and the standard transaction execution policy is assumed, that is, the read and write operations are issued continuously during transaction execution. However, the write operations are copied into the database only when the transaction commits. The amount of concurrency provided by the OSN method is demonstrated by log classification. It is shown that the OSN method provides more concurrency than basic timestamp ordering and two-phase locking methods and handles successfully some logs which cannot be handled by any of the past methods. The complexity analysis of the algorithm indicates that the method works in a reasonable amount of time.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

An Alternative Approach to the American Demand for Money

WITH A DECADE OF EVIDENCE BEHIND IT, the profession seems to have agreed on the fact that a structural break shifted the American demand for shortly after 1973. It is difficult to pinpoint the source of the trouble precisely, let alone to explain the event with an econometric model. In their survey, Judd and Scadding (1982) tentatively concluded that financial innovation is the source of the problem. While this conclusion has not been universally accepted, the instability of the demand function is largely taken as a given stylized fact. The primary goal of this article is to provide an alternative solution to the case of the missing money using the methods of Hendry (1979). It should be stressed at the outset that, as this paper deals with a problem in the applied literature, it is unabashedly empirical in nature; the paper attempts to explain an empirical difficulty without presenting a new theoretical model of demand. Rather, in the context of the standard transactions demand theory for narrow money, a number of questions are analyzed with an atypical econometric model. Was there actually a shift, or a series of shifts in the demand for money? If not, why have other investigators concluded that there was in fact a shift? Most importantly, what function seems to be the most reasonable approximation to the data generation process during the period in question?

Status of the Segment Interconnect, Cable Segment Ancillary Logic, and the Cable Segment Hybrid Driver Projects

The FASTBUS Segment Interconnect (SI) provides a communication path between two otherwise independent, asynchronous bus segments. In particular, the Segment Interconnect links a backplane crate segment to a cable segment. All standard FASTBUS address and data transactions can be passed through the SI or any number of SIs and segments in a path. Thus systems of arbitrary connection complexity can be formed, allowing simultaneous independent processing, yet still permitting devices associated with one segment to be accessed from others. The model S1 Segment Interconnect and the Cable Segment Ancillary Logic covered in this report comply with all the mandatory features stated in the FASTBUS specification document DOE/ER-0189. A block diagram of the SI is shown.

Franchising and Interbrand Competition

In many markets with product differentiation, franchisors distribute their products through geographically dispersed franchisees. The main body of the literature on franchising focuses on conflicts of interest in the franchise contract [2; 9; 16] and on whether a franchise is closer to the standard commercial transaction or the standard employment relationship [13]. The rest of the literature confronts more specific problems like resale price maintenance [5; 15], territorial and customer restriction [10; 12], or the determination of the franchise fee and royalty rate [1; 8; 10]. The common model pertains to a single monopolistic franchisor bent on extracting the most profit from its franchisees by various contractual restrictions.

The FASTBUS Segment Interconnect

The FASTBUS Segment Interconnect provides a communication path between two otherwise independent, asynchronous bus segments. In particular, the segment interconnect links a backplace (crate) segment to a cable segment. All standard FASTBUS address and data transactions can be passed through the SI, or any number of SI's and segments in a path. Thus systems of arbitrary connection complexity can be formed, allowing simultaneous independent processing, yet still permitting devices associated with one segment to be accessed from others. The model S1 segment interconnect being built at the University of Illinois supports these and other important features.