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This paper aims to examine the customer-based and supplier-based trade credit gaps for USA firms from 1970 to 2020.

The authors' study examines USA companies from 1970 to 2020. The authors begin with an analysis of the trends in aggregate working capital, the capital's components and the trade credit gaps. Various regression models are used to estimate the impacts of identified firm characteristics and unidentified sources on customer-based and supplier-based trade credit gaps over time. The authors then decompose the impacts of firm characteristics to further understand whether changing firm characteristics and/or changing sensitivity to firm characteristics drive the variation in trade credit gaps.

There is a gradual reduction in the customer-based trade credit gap and a substantial expansion in the supplier-based trade credit gap. Though identified firm characteristics have dominant impacts on observed trade credit gaps, there is evidence of the effects of time and unobservable factors. The main source of changes in customer-based and supplier-based trade credit gaps lies in changes in sensitivity to firm characteristics. In addition, the authors find that firm age is the factor with the largest average effect on both trade credit gaps when examining the full sample period. However, different firm characteristics appear to be the key driver of variations in trade credit gaps over time and across the two types of trade credit gaps. The authors also find that financial distress has the least impact on both customer-based and supplier-based trade gaps. There are variations in the firm characteristics with the largest impacts when evaluating decade-long evaluation periods.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the customer-based and supplier-based trade credit gaps. The connection between trade credit and the trade credit's corresponding inventory (INV) component extends prior literature on the joint management of trade credit and INV. The authors analyze both identified firm characteristics and unidentified sources in the search for explanations of the trade credit gaps. Furthermore, the authors' study explores the channels through which firm characteristics affect different types of trade credit gaps. The authors' findings help identify relevant and irrelevant risk factors of corporate working capital policy.

This paper aims to examine whether the substitution of employee stock options (ESOs) for debt occurs for firms with different tax status classifications throughout the conditional distribution of interest expense before and after the implementation of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard 123R (SFAS 123R).

This study uses Censored Quantile Regression (CQR) to assess whether the substitution effect is dependent on firms' position in the conditional distribution of interest expense. Our sample firms are categorized into two groups: one group (tax‐sensitive) that is sensitive to additional deductions due to a moderate income level and the other group (tax‐insatiable) that is not sensitive because of very high income level.

The substitution effect is not present for firms with below medium level of interest expense. Only tax‐sensitive firms substitute at medium levels of interest expense while both tax‐sensitive and tax‐insatiable firms substitute at high levels of interest expense. Tax‐insatiable firms with very high levels of interest expense also substitute; however, tax‐sensitive firms with very high levels of interest expense only substitute after SFAS 123R required firms to report ESO expense in financial statements. We attribute the substitution patterns revealed by the CQR analysis to a positive relationship between interest expense and cost of debt.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to analyze firms' tax status classification impact on the substitution of ESO expense for interest expense across different levels of interest expense. Our application of CQR should benefit researchers who are interested in examining explanatory variables' impact at various points in the conditional distribution of the dependent variable. This study also refines the conjecture that ESOs are substitutes for debt by demonstrating that such relationship is dependent on the level of interest expense and tax status. Furthermore, the finding of firms substituting ESOs for debt provides accounting standard setters a reason to begin requiring firms to re‐measure the value of ESOs after the grant date until the exercise date.

Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) and electrical resistance tomography (ERT) are promising techniques for multiphase flow measurement due to their high speed, low cost, non-invasive and visualization features. There are two major difficulties in image reconstruction for ECT and ERT: the “soft-field”effect, and the ill-posedness of the inverse problem, which includes two problems: under-determined problem and the solution is not stable, i.e. is very sensitive to measurement errors and noise. This paper aims to summarize and evaluate various reconstruction algorithms which have been studied and developed in the word for many years and to provide reference for further research and application.

In the past 10 years, various image reconstruction algorithms have been developed to deal with these problems, including in the field of industrial multi-phase flow measurement and biological medical diagnosis.

This paper reviews existing image reconstruction algorithms and the new algorithms proposed by the authors for electrical capacitance tomography and electrical resistance tomography in multi-phase flow measurement and biological medical diagnosis.

The authors systematically summarize and evaluate various reconstruction algorithms which have been studied and developed in the word for many years and to provide valuable reference for practical applications.

This paper aims to investigate the financial aspects of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), its sources of financing and the management of funds in a State-like apparatus.

It is argued that ISIS constitutes a phenomenon not only due to the extreme violence, instrumentalized via “marketing” methods but also on grounds of its declared aspiration to occupy and control land and population with ever expanding borders. After analyzing the group’s sources of funding which are closely interlinked to the areas it controls and its coordinated efforts to establish a proto-terror state framework, a strategy for addressing this threat based on international practices and decisions is being highlighted.

ISIS represents a “sui generis”, primarily self-funded State Scale Entity, a case study for Defense and Security Geo-economics. Its “economic model”, an amalgam of terrorist and criminal practices, could not be used for a viable proto-state it aspires to be.

No official data of any kind are available by international recognized organizations or bodies. The sources for this paper are primarily Western media, journalists, indirect habitants’ testimonies and very few official reports.

Caution must be exercised, when using even trivial platforms of social media and mobile applications, linked even remotely with ISIS or its affiliates.

This paper is a comprehensive presentation of the economic facets of this first modern endeavor for a terror-state.

Private provision of public services has always been a factor in local government. In 1736 Benjamin Franklin and a group of civic leaders founded a fire company in Philadelphia because such a service was needed and the city could not provide it. Local municipalities often cannot provide the labor, equipment, and expertise to build roads, to do data processing, or to run hospitals but rather arrange with someone else who has the expertise to perform these tasks. However, during the 1970s rapid inflation, shrinking tax bases, and “no growth” budgets made the public provision of even what is popularly perceived as essential government services seem more like a tight‐rope walk than responsible government.