Research Newsletter
Volume 3, Issue 1 Winter 2000

We welcome suggestions about the content and structure, as well as the frequency and distribution of this newsletter. Suggestions can be directed to Professor David Merriman at DMERRIM@LUC.EDU

Dr. John R. Boatright: (Raymond C.Baumhart, Professor, Business Ethics)
John R. Boatright, has published an article, "Conflicts of Interest in Financial Services," in the Summer 2000 issue of Business and Society Review. The article is a shortened version of a chapter in a forthcoming book, Conflict of Interest in the Professions, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Prof. Boatright has two other works currently in press. One titled "Contract Theory and Business Ethics: A Review of Ties That Bind," will be published in Business and Society Review. The second work in press is "Contractors as Stakeholders: Reconciling Stakeholder Theory with the Nexus of Contracts Firm," to be published in a special issue of the Journal of Banking and Finance devoted to papers presented at a conference at the University of Notre Dame in September 1999.

Prof. Boatright has just completed a chapter, "Ethics and Corporate Governance: Justifying the Role of Shareholders," for a forthcoming book, Guide to Business Ethics, edited by Norman E. Bowie to be published by Blackwell Publishers.

Chaim Ehrman (Associate Professor, Marketing)
Professor Ehrman, published an article entitled " On streamlining information search in marketing journals," in the Fall 1999 edition of, Transactions in International Information Systems. He also presented his paper, at the INFORMS conference in San Antonio, Texas, on November 5, 2000 and chaired the Sunday Session in Marketing.

The Marketing discipline can be approached from a quantitative aspect using advanced mathematical models or from a qualitative approach structuring problems using the SWOT (Strengths; Weakness; Opportunities; and Threats) approach. Using Factor Analysis, Marketing Journals are grouped by their content and rated by their respective quality within their specific orientation. Forty-seven marketing journals were rated by Academics and Practitioners nationwide . The ratings were based on the Journal's ability to disseminate new information to the discipline.

George G. Kaufman: (John F. Smith, Jr., Professor, Finance and Economics)
Professor Kaufman, presented two papers at the Pacific Basin Economics, Finance, and Accounting Conference in Bangkok, Thailand in June. He also participated in an invited brainstorming seminar at the FDIC in Washington, D.C. in June. He organized and chaired three sessions at the Western Economics Association meetings, the papers will be published in a book, in Vancouver in July. Professor Kaufman also attended the annual meeting of the Financial Economists Roundtable, which discussed restructuring the IMF, in July and participated in an invited seminar at the Financial Stability Forum at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland in July. He made a presentation to the annual meeting of the National Association of Business Economists in Chicago in September, attended the annual joint meeting of the European, Japanese, and U.S. Shadow Financial Regulatory Committees in Tokyo in October and presented two papers at an accompanying conference. He also presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Financial Management Association in Seattle in October, for which he had also served as program track chair for financial institutions.

Ronald J. Kizior: (Associate Professor, ISOM)
Ronald Kizior recently published (with Donald Carr) a paper titled "The Case for Continued COBOL Education", in the March/April 2000 issue of IEEE Software.

This paper reports the results of a recent survey of both academic and professionals involved in information systems. The authors found that 95% of the academic respondents and 90% of IS managers still want IS curricula to offer COBOL instruction. They further found that nearly 90% of IS managers want both object-oriented and Web-based features integrated into COBOL instruction in college curricula.

A.G. Malliaris: (Walter F. Mullady, Sr., Professor, Business Administration)
Professor A. G. Malliaris had his book Foundations of Futures Markets recently published by Edward Elgar Publishing Company. This book is a collection of twelve previously published articles by Professor Malliaris as well as five new articles prepared for this book. A foreword written by Professor Jerome Stein of Brown University praises the book for being well written and very thoughtful. Risk management and financial derivatives, professionals will find this book very informative.

Mary Ann McGrath: (Associate Professor, Marketing)
Professor McGrath has an article entitled "The Perceptions and Realities of Male Shopping Behavior" with Cele Otens forthcoming in the Journal of Retailing. In this empirical study McGrath and Otnes explore, describe and systematically debunk three common stereotypes of the male shopper. These are labeled "Grab and Go," "Whine and Wait," and "Fear of the Feminine." Through observation and in-depth interviewing the authors demonstate how actual behavior of men in the marketplace belies these stereotypes. For example, men often evaluate alternatives, bargain, socialize their children to be thoughtful shoppers and shop in stores they label "feminine." While many men have transcended traditional gender roles, they have found ways to satisfy an ethic of achievement in the marketplace.

David Merriman (Professor, Economics)
Professor Merriman recently published a paper entitled "Did Distortionary Sales Taxation Contribute to the Growth of the Service Sector" co-authored with Mark Skidmore in National Tax Journal and a second paper entitled "The Effects of Tax Increment Financing on Economic Development" co-authored with Richard Dye appeared in the Journal of Urban Economics. Prof. Merriman also had two policy briefs on the condition of state government budgets published by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. In November 2000 Prof. Merriman presented his paper "When do states legislate tax changes?" to the Economics department of the University of Illinois, Chicago and to the National Tax Association Annual meetings in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Prof. Merriman's research shows that states frequently alter tax policy in response to economic conditions. Political factors however, play no statistically significant role in tax policy changes.

Jasmine Tata: (Associate Professor, Management)
Professor Tata has recently published an article entitled, "Toward a Theoretical Framework of Intercultural Account-Giving and Account Evaluation" in the International Journal of Organizational Analysis. This paper conceptualizes the influence of national culture on accounts (explanations) in teams, and presents a theoretical model of the relationships between dimensions of cultural variability, face support, account-giving, and account evaluation. The model suggests that a message can suffer from loss of meaning when decoded in another culture with different assumptions and cultural values, and helps us understand inter-cultural account-giving (i.e., how team members provide accounts when communicating with co-workers from another culture).

Steve Todd: (Assistant Professor, Finance)
Professor Todd's paper titled "The effects of securitization on consumer mortgage costs" will appear in the December, 2000 edition of Real Estate Economics.

Professor Todd examines the effects of securitization on two dimensions of consumer mortgage costs: coupon rates and loan origination fees. He found no evidence that securitization reduces the coupon rates on fixed or adjustable-rate mortgages. Instead, securitization appears to lower mortgage loan origination fees, resulting in substantial savings for consumers. Securitization activity includes passthrough creation and collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) creation.Tests of differences between the effects of passthrough and CMO creation on primary mortgage costs show no distinguishable effects on loan rates and origination fees. Surprisingly this suggests that a large derivatives market for mortgage loans does not create value for consumers.

Mark Van Oyen: (Visiting Associate Professor, ISOM)
Professor Van Oyen continues to perform research as director of WorkSmart, a research laboratory. This laboratory links faculty and graduate students at Loyola University Chicago's School of Business Administration, Northwestern University's Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences Department, and Georgia Institute of Technology's Industrial & Systems Engineering Department.

• Van Oyen, M.P., E. Senturk-Gel, and W. J. Hopp, "Performance opportunity for workforce agility in collaborative and non-collaborative work systems," Forthcoming in IIE Transactions (2000).
• Van Oyen, M.P. and J. Pichitlamken, "Optimal Expected Weighted Flowtime Policies with a Makespan Constraint and Set-up Times" Forthcoming in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM) (2000).
• E.G.S. Gel, W. J. Hopp, and M.P. Van Oyen, Factors affecting opportunity of worksharing as a dynamic line balancing mechanism, submitted for publication, (2000).
• Hopp, W.J., and Van Oyen, M.P., "Agile Workforce Evaluation: A Framework for Cross-training and Coordination," Proc. 2001 NSF Design and Manufacturing Grantees Conference, Tampa, FL (Jan. 2001) 21 pages.