VCU School of Business faculty members have been busy this summer making presentations around the world.

Dr. Frank Franzak, Department Chair of Marketing, presented "Attracting and Retaining the 'In-Community' and 'Virtual' Creative Class: Theoretical Correlates to Sustained Competitiveness in the Global Knowledge Economy," at the Consortium for International Marketing Research (CIMaR) 2006 Annual Meeting, held in Istanbul, Turkey, May 26 -30. Co-researchers are Van Wood, Philip Morris Chair of International Business at VCU, and Dennis Pitta, of the University of Baltimore. This paper is part of a larger project examining creativity as a country or regional resource, as identified by cultural characteristics.

Dr. Gurpreet S. Dhillon, professor of Information Systems, led two workshop sessions on July 3 at the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) , in Hyderabad, India. During Session I he presented “The Challenge of Managing Information System Security” and later in the day he presented “Towards a Robust Security Policy Formulation.”

“The Institute is the nexus of all banking electronic communications (ATM traffic, financial networks, etc.) in India. Their research and development activities are aimed at improving banking technology in the country. It is actively involved in the development of various standards and systems for banking technology in coordination with the Reserve Bank of India, Indian Banks Association, other related industries and the Government of India, “ says Dr. Dhillon.

Dr. Michael W. Pitts, professor of Management, presented the paper “Achieving Excellence in Global Business Education: Focus on the super-stories of our times,” at the 13th Annual EdiNEB Education in Innovation in Economics and Business International Conference (EDiNEB) June 15 in Lisbon, Portugal. It was co-authored with Dr. Van Wood, Philip Morris International Chair. The paper expands upon a previous paper on the concerns over the substance, quality and relevance of business education. Their paper advocates that to truly achieve excellence in global business education, educators must base their programs on the two prevailing super-stories of our times, namely globalization and clashes between civilizations.

Dr. Peter Aiken began in May, delivering "Metadata Strategies and Fundamentals" in Frankfurt, German.

“Today's metadata initiatives must deliver immediate ROI to retain management commitment. This talk shows how organizations have successfully started and made rapid metadata progress in today's environment by applying modern metadata strategies and concentrating on the fundamentals.” says Dr. Aiken. In June he presented "Achieving EAI with Service-Based Architectures" in Helsinki, Finland

In the past, EAI, has focused on middleware-based solutions aimed at connecting disparate applications together. Now businesses are realizing that technical solutions alone cannot help us to tame the legacy dragon, integrating new and working applications, as well as new or existing data in databases or files, built using diverse technologies, across a network connecting the machines of a company or companies. XML-based EAI technologies permits implementation with minimal or no change to the existing applications or data - a non intrusive approach." This talk highlights aspects of XML-based, EAI technologies that can deliver tangible integration, rapidly when implemented by data management.* How XML-based metadata engineering is required as we reconsider our approaches to data quality engineering and enterprise integration?

Later in June, Dr. Aiken presented “XML in Datat Management” at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

“XML has evolved from an interesting to a necessary capability. Focusing on practical implementation,this presentations shows solution designers, technology managers and data architect show XML best compliments and assists ongoing data management activities, “ says Dr. Aiken.

Dr. Leslie Stratton, associate professor of Economics, made two presentations before the Danish National Institute of Social Research, Copenhagen Denmark. On June 12 she presented “The Effect of Family Structure on Parents’ Child Care Time in the United States and the United Kingdom". Joint work with Charlene Kalenkoski (Ohio University) and David Ribar (George Washington University).

On June 19, she spoke at the Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus, Denmark, on “College Enrollment, Attrition, and Degree Progress.” Joint work with Dr. Jim Wetzel at VCU.

“The Effect of Family Structure on Parents’ Child Care Time in the United States and the United Kingdom”.

Abstract:

Human capital theory suggests that an increase in the net benefit from a college degree will have consequences for both enrollment and progress towards a degree. First, those who would have attended were the benefits unchanged (‘traditional college goers’) will have an incentive to complete their degree more rapidly. Second, enrollment as a whole will rise. Some individuals who were previously on the lower side of the decision margin, for whom college was not worth their investment, will now find it worth enrolling. We point out that the time investment in college is particularly important. These marginal students may anticipate that it will take them longer to obtain a degree. Thus, such newly attracted ‘marginal’ subgroups may be more likely to progress more slowly toward a degree than previous cohorts, as well as be more likely to drop out. While increases in the net benefit from a college degree will certainly increase enrollment, the net impact on average time-to-degree is uncertain.

We present evidence that the net benefit from a college degree has risen in the US and use data from the two longitudinal Beginning Postsecondary Surveys (BPS:90/94 and BPS: 96/01) to search for evidence to support the theoretical predictions. We find evidence that those enrolling in the more recent cohort are statistically different from those enrolling in the earlier cohort. Blacks, Hispanics, and those from low income households appear to be more likely to attend in 1996 than in 1990. We further find that, controlling for a broad range of individual, household, and institutional characteristics, those entering in the more recent cohort make significantly more progress towards a degree than those entering in the first cohort. Finally, we find that blacks and particularly Hispanics entering in the second cohort make less progress than their first cohort counterparts, which suggests that some new entrants may progress more slowly.

June 27, 2006. IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor), Bonn, Germany. Presented “The Effect of Family Structure on Parents’ Child Care Time in the United States and the United Kingdom”. Joint work with Charlene Kalenkoski and David Ribar.

Abstract:

The time that parents devote to caring for their children represents an enormous, yet sometimes under-appreciated, investment in human capital. In this study, we use time-diary data from the 2003 and 2004 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS) and from the 2000 United Kingdom Time Use Study (UKTUS) to investigate the determinants of mothers’ and fathers’ time investments in child care in the U.S. and the U.K.. Our particular focus is on the effect of family structure (whether respondents are married, cohabiting, or single-parents) on time use. As both family structure and size (the number of children) are choice variables, we estimate systems of equations that control for the endogeneity of these choices. Time spent on primary child care, passive child care, and market work are modeled using correlated tobit equations to handle nonnegativity constraints and the constraints imposed by the 24 hour diary time limit. We find little difference in the time investments of married and cohabiting parents. The most substantial cross-country differences arise in the time spent on market work by single as opposed to couplebased households. Single parents in the U.S. spend more time on market work relative to their coupled counterparts, while single parents in the U.K. spend less time on market work relative to their coupled counterparts.
Dr. Leslie S. Stratton, Department of Economics, )9-4_ 828-7141

Dr. Rasoul H. “Ross” Tondkar and colleagues will present the research paper “The Impact of Corporate Social Disclosure (CSD) on Investment Behavior: A Cross-National Study” at the IFSAM Vll World Congress in Berlin, Germany in September.

ABSTRACT

We examine the impact of CSD on investment behavior in the U.S., Japan, France, and Sweden. We use neo-institutional and stakeholder theories as the underlying framework for our analysis. We find that there is a significant difference in investors' reactions to CSD across countries. Using a stakeholder scale we also find that these reactions are related to the investors' views of the relevant stakeholders of a corporation. These findings provide insight into the cross-country differences in the perceived relevance of CSD to investors.

*This paper will be presented at IFSAM Vilith World Congress in Berlin, Germany, September 2006

Harmonization of Chinese Accounting Practices with International Financial Reporting Standards: An Empirical Evaluation*

ABSTRACT

In this study we use China as a case of an emerging market economy to empirically examine whether China's efforts over the past fifteen years to converge domestic accounting standards with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have been successful in the harmonization of Chinese listed firms' accounting practices with IFRS. This study is unique in that we evaluate harmonization of firms' accounting practices from three perspectives: (1) the level of' compliance with Chinese GAAP and IFRS, (2) the comparability of accounting choices under Chinese GAAP and IFRS and, (3) identification of significant differences in the net incomes produced under Chinese GAAP and IFRS.

We use the 1999 and 2002 annual reports of 79 Chinese listed firms to represent 1998 Chinese GAAP and 2001 Chinese GAAP. We find improvement in both compliance with IFRS and in the comparability of annual reports prepared under Chinese GAAP and IFRS. We also find a reduction in the difference between Chinese GAAP-based and IFRS-based net income from 1999 to 2002 as the result of the promulgation of 2001 Chinese GAAP. These findings imply that the harmonization of accounting regulations is highly relevant to the harmonization of accounting practices. Lastly, we find that Chinese listed firms' compliance with IFRS is significantly lower than their compliance with Chinese GAAP suggesting that IFRS enforcement in China is not as rigorous as Chinese GAAP enforcement. Overall our findings imply that emerging economies may be able to use harmonization with IFRS as a vehicle to improve their financial reporting.

*This paper was presented in an international research conference in China