The purpose of this paper is to understand why a host country (HC) shows ex post opportunistic behaviors in E&P projects and frequently forces international oil companies (IOCs) to renegotiate previously signed contracts. This research employs the concept of asset specificity and hold-up problem in transaction cost economics (TCE). It then examines the unique characteristics of E&P projects, HC’s opportunistic behaviors, and IOCs’ safeguards. For a case study analyzing the implications between the economic theory and HC’s ex post opportunism in oil E&P project, I have selected Kazakhstan. The result is that HC’s ex post opportunism can be explained by a hold-up problem resulting from IOCs’ sunk investments and the unique characteristics of the oil E&P industry. When IOCs’ important capital assets become sunk investments and the price of oil increases rapidly, HC has a strong incentive to appropriate IOCs’ profits through ex post opportunism. Yet at the same time, HC must consider the damage to its reputation when deciding the extent and ways of its ex post opportunistic behaviors in oil E&P projects. / text

Organizations are increasingly focusing on their value chain activities in an effort to improve their performance, especially in the recent economic times. Improving the effectiveness and efficiency of their channel activities has become a focal point for many organizations. Interorganizational systems (IOS’s) have played an important part in this effort. While in theory, IOS’s have the ability to enhance the degree of cooperation and coordination between two channel partners, often the results obtained are not what is expected. Hence, it becomes very important to understand the barriers to the assimilation of these technologies. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives of governance, including transaction cost analysis (TCA), control theory and agency theory, we develop an integrative model that examines the factors that influence an organizations assimilation process. The model identifies and examines three stages of assimilation: technological, exploitive and explorative assimilation that add value to an organization. The model features asset specificity, technological uncertainty, performance documentation, agent orientation and bilateral governance mechanisms as antecedents to assimilation. It also examines the moderating effects of bilateral mechanisms. Our results suggest that theories of governance provide an additional lens to examine assimilation phenomena. In specific, our empirical analysis leads to several key findings: (1) channel partners who are locked in to the relationship with high levels of asset specificity are more likely to assimilate the technology; (2) bilateral governance mechanisms are a key force in the assimilation process, with both direct and moderated effects; (3) organizations that view the channel partner as an agent of the firm are less likely to adopt the technology, especially when the relationship exhibits low levels of bilateral governance mechanisms. Together these findings provide new insights into barriers to the assimilation of IOS’s in channel relationships.

Magistro darbe nagrinėjami sandorių, sudarytų dėl apgaulės ir suklydimo, pripažinimo negaliojančiais teoriniai ir praktiniai aspektai. Lietuvos teisinėje literatūroje nagrinėjama tema nepakankamai analizuota, tačiau tema aktuali, kadangi vienas dažniausių teismų praktikoje pasitaikančių sandorių nuginčijimo pagrindų yra būtent sandorių sudarymas apgaulės ar suklydimo įtakoje. Darbe aptariama sandorio negaliojimo samprata, negaliojančių sandorių klasifikacija, analizuojamos sandorių sudarytų dėl suklydimo ir apgaulės pripažinimo negaliojančiais galimybės bei šių sandorių negaliojimo teisinės pasekmės. Pateikiama sandorių sudarytų dėl suklydimo ir sandorių sudarytų dėl apgaulės takoskyra. Daug dėmesio darbe skiriama teismų praktikos nagrinėjamu klausimu analizei, apibendrinama Lietuvos Aukščiausiojo Teismo praktika, susijusi su darbo tema. Kartu atskleidžiamos teisinio sureguliavimo problemos, iškylančios sandorių, sudarytų suklydimo ir apgaulės įtakoje, pripažinimo negaliojančiais metu. Naudojant lyginamąjį metodą, darbe atskleidžiama Lietuvos ir užsienio valstybių - Vokietijos, Prancūzijos, Italijos, Lenkijos ir Rusijos - sandorių, sudarytų suklydimo ir apgaulės įtakoje, teisinis reglamentavimas. Darbo pabaigoje pateikiamos autoriaus išvados ir pasiūlymai dėl atitinkamų įstatymo normų tobulinimo. / This magistrate's study deals with theoretical and practical aspects of invalidity of transactions concluded under the influence of mistake and fraud. This theme has not been discussed enough in Lithuanian legal literature, but it is topical because one of the most common grounds to contest the transaction are mistake and fraud. This study analyse the concept of invalid transaction, the general classification of such transactions, possibilities to avoid a transaction concluded under the influence of mistake and fraud, also the differences of transactions which are concluded under the influence of mistake and which are concluded under the influence of fraud. Much attention is devoted to analysis of interpretation and application of legal rules found in Lithuanian Supreme Court's decisions. Moreover this study deals with the generalization of court decisions concerned to this study, also unclose of problems of law regulation during avoidance of transactions concluded under the influence of mistake and fraud. Comparative method is used to compare legal regulation of invalidity of transactions concluded under the influence of a mistake and fraud in Lithuania and other countries, like Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Russia. Finally author gives the conclusions and proposals to improve laws.

No description available.

In this paper we develop an alternative to minimum support which utilizes knowledge of the process which generates transaction data and allows for highly skewed frequency distributions. We apply a simple stochastic model (the NB model), which is known for its usefulness to describe item occurrences in transaction data, to develop a frequency constraint. This model-based frequency constraint is used together with a precision threshold to find individual support thresholds for groups of associations. We develop the notion of NB-frequent itemsets and present two mining algorithms which find all NB-frequent itemsets in a database. In experiments with publicly available transaction databases we show that the new constraint can provide significant improvements over a single minimum support threshold and that the precision threshold is easier to use. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operations

This is a question-driven project where it seeks to find social connections in monetary transactions. Disruptive experiments have been conducted to understand the complex relationship between money and social connections. A design concept, developed through a service blueprint, has been used to investigate a hypothesis. Screen-based mobile app prototypes have been used to engage users to dialogue into the issue of social connections in transactions. By basing purchasing decisions on economic value, consumers are neglecting to take social values into consideration. As a result, it has led to social disconnection between the consumers and the producers. By research through design, this project aims to identify the attributes in monetary transaction that led to this disconnection. It also aims to image a new transaction system highlighting social connections. The result is a payment platform concept as a case study of for the restaurant industry. By tracing and visualizing the flow of money in a purchase, the payment platform allows the consumers to see the connections they have with the producers. By making the social connections visible, consumers can begin to balance their purchasing decision based on social and monetary values. Through the dialogues generated in the user tests, the project encounters the social issue in the increasing dependence on imported food and its effect on the local economy. The dialogues also shed light on the fact that the dependence on money as a medium of exchange deepens the interdependency between individuals as today’s food production requires global collaboration. By making social connections visible in transaction, instead of social disconnection, money is in fact social.

The Bitcoin currency relies on a transaction verification system run by a decentralized network of miners. This paper evaluates the long-term economic stability of Bitcoin mining. Specifically, I analyze the incentive structure surrounding transaction fees, which are part of the reward miners earn for verifying transactions in the Bitcoin network. My method of investigation is to first construct a visual model representing miner incentives, then input current and estimated data into that model, and finally determine how individual miners and pools will behave based on the key variables included in the model and industry trends. I conclude, under the current protocol rules, Bitcoin mining is not economically sustainable in the long-term due to the impending centralization of the network. Centralization in itself will not necessarily destroy the network. However, it will lead to unsatisfactory outcomes that will greatly lower the value of the entire system. Therefore, I recommend two potential solutions to the centralization issue, namely the requirement of either P2Pools or a proof-of-stake mechanism. The development of future applications on the Bitcoin protocol depends on the success of the Bitcoin currency application. These future technologies, along with the Bitcoin currency, have the potential to disrupt many industries. But, if miner incentives are not aligned with maintaining decentralization, then none of this potential will be realized.

This thesis discusses the financial market model with proportional transaction costs considered in Cvitanic and Karatzas (1996) (hereafter we use CK (1996)). For a modified dual problem introduced by Choulli (2009), I discuss solutions under weaker conditions than those of CK (1996), and furthermore the obtained solutions generalize the examples treated in CK (1996). Then, I consider the exponential utility which does not belong to the family of utility considered by CK (1996) due to the Inada condition. Finally, I elaborate the same results as in CK (1996) for the exponential utility, and I derive other related results using the specificity of the exponential utility function as well. These lead to a different method/approach than CK (1996) for our utility maximization problem, and different notion of admissibility for financial strategies as well. / Mathematical Finance

Batch processing is a means of improving the efficiency of transaction processing systems. Despite the maturity of this field, there is no rigorous theory that can assist in the design of batch systems. This thesis proposes such a theory, and shows that it is practical to use it to automate system design. This has important consequences; the main impediment to the wider use of batch systems is the high cost of their development and intenance. The theory is developed twice: informally, in a way that can be used by a systems analyst, and formally, as a result of which a computer program has been developed to prove the feasibility of automated design. Two important concepts are identified, which can aid in the decomposition of any system: 'separability', and 'independence'. Separability is the property that allows processes to be joined together by pipelines or similar topologies. Independence is the property that allows elements of a large set to be accessed and updated independently of one another. Traditional batch processing technology exploits independence when it uses sequential access in preference to random access. It is shown how the same property allows parallel access, resulting in speed gains limited only by the number of processors. This is a useful development that should assist in the design of very high throughput transaction processing systems. Systems are specified procedurally by describing an ideal system, which generates output and updates its internal state immediately following each input event. The derived systems have the same external behaviour as the ideal system except that their outputs and internal states lag those of the ideal system arbitrarily. Indeed, their state variables may have different delays, and the systems as whole may never be in consistent state. A 'state dependency graph' is derived from a static analysis of a specification. The reduced graph of its strongly-connected components defines a canonical process network from which all possible implementations of the system can be derived by composition. From these it is possible to choose the one that minimises any imposed cost function. Although, in general, choosing the optimum design proves to be an NP-complete problem, it is shown that heuristics can find it quickly in practical cases. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mathematical and Computer Sciences (Department of Computer Science), 1999.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, School of Management, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.