Dear JCAF Reader, Two outstanding people have been added to the Editorial Advisory Board of JCAF. The first is Tom Pryor, president of Integrated Cost Management Systems, Inc. (ICMS). Tom helps family-owned businesses create and implement leadership transition. He is a certified Family Business Advisor and an entrepreneur since 1988, when he founded ICMS, Inc., a Denton, Texas–based consulting firm. Tom's career includes six years as director of the University of Texas at Arlington's Small Business Development Center and 19 years of financial management with General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, and Motorola. Tom was the focus of a BusinessWeek magazine 1988 cover story featuring activity-based costing, has authored five books, written hundreds of blogs, teaches at several universities, and provides services for Baylor's Institute for Family Business. Tom's passions are reading books—eight so far in 2015—creating new products such as his BullsEye one-page strategic plan process, and making the complex simple. Tom has been happily married for 46 years and is debt free, both consistent with his life verse and favorite proverb: Success is not logical. He can be reached at TomPryor@icms.net. The other new member of the Editorial Advisory Board is Dr. Gregory L. Prescott. He is an Assistant Professor of Accounting in the Mitchell College of Business at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. He is a CPA (Alabama), CMA, CGMA, and CFM and earned his DBA from Kennesaw State University in 2014. He teaches financial accounting at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He brings 25 years in commercial banking in credit risk management to JCAF. He has been a faculty member of the Alabama Banking School since 1998. Professor Prescott has published several articles in JCAF as well as articles in the CPA Journal and Strategic Finance. His research interests include the impact of newly enacted financial accounting standards and corporate governance issues. For many years he has observed how accounting standards impact corporate banking relationships. One of his professional goals is to communicate the findings of recent academic research that might be of interest to corporate accounting and finance executives in a practical manner. He may be reached at gprescot@southalabama.edu. The continuing member of the Editorial Advisory Board is Caroline D. Strobel. Caroline is a CPA and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She has published many articles about taxation in various journals and has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the IRS of the United States. Caroline writes a column for JCAF. She can be reached at strobel@moore.sc.edu. JCAF is now providing “independent double-blind reviews for all submissions by authors who select this option. Of course, this option will require more time for the process to be completed. All articles that go through the independent review process will be labeled accordingly when published. We will continue to provide editorial reviews by staff for those not requiring independent peer evaluations. In addition, we will continue to commission articles on an opportunity basis. We want to provide quality for the readers of JCAF. In this issue, two new categories have been added. First, Art Worster and his associates, Thomas R. Weirich and Frank Andera, will address matters that arise during and after the implementation of integrated information technology (IT) applications in a business. Art and his team will provide a series of related subtopics in a manner that will allow a fuller development over time for topics that do not easily fit appropriately into a particular issue's theme. We can expect to see more usable ideas within such a framework along with a fuller and more comprehensive coverage spread over several issues of JCAF. Additional series topics will be added in the future. Second, Tim Chartier provides an entry in a section for commentaries entitled “What's Your Problem? Tim is a professor of mathematics and computer science at Davidson College in North Carolina. He is noted as one of the world's greatest professors by the Great Courses publishers of great lectures. Since 1980, this organization has identified the top 1% of professors based on teaching awards, published evaluations, newspaper write-ups of the best teachers on campus, and other sources. Only the top 1 in 5,000 college professors are chosen to be on the Great Courses faculty. Tim's top lecture is “Big Data: How Data Analytics Is Transforming the World. We especially invite readers and authors to submit short commentaries dealing with current matters of potential interest to the readers. We are looking for practical commentaries from academicians, consultants, and those engaged in business activities. Those with little time for writing full articles can take this opportunity to share some of their great ideas, experiences, and recommendations. Hopefully, we can include several of these in each issue. Commentaries will not be subject to the normal review process. These submissions will be evaluated and selected for publication by the editor. This issue features articles on international accounting and finance. Transfer pricing has been one of the most often discussed topics related to intermediate transactions among related parties, both domestically and internationally. “Transfer Pricing: Factors to Consider was written by Mark Cecchini, Robert Leitch, and Caroline Strobel. You will find some new insights concerning the topic of transfer pricing in this article. Roger Y. W. Tang and Kuanchin Chen update us on the magnitude of China's international investment in “China's International Investment and the United States. The main purpose of this article is to examine the recent changes in foreign direct investment (FDI) in China and China's outward direct investment (ODI), and to review the bilateral investment relationships between China and the United States. In “Democracy or Euro: Who Will Surrender? Alberto Lanzavecchia and Eugenio Pavarani offer insights into the eurozone, one of the most challenging experiments toward market and political integration through a single monetary unit—namely, the euro. However, whereas markets might be fully integrated even without a common European currency, the euro and its functional institutions are shrinking sovereignty within member states. Authors Greg Prescott and Carol E. Vann, in “The Effects of National Culture on Financial Statement Comparability: A Survey of Research Findings, show that culture influences a nation's institutions, and those institutions influence a nation's accounting system. By itself, a decision to implement International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in a given country is not likely to result in an enduring improvement in financial reporting or in enhancing the comparability of cross-country financial statements because the preparation of financial statements requires professional judgment, which research has demonstrated can be affected by an individual's cultural values. This article underwent a “double-blind review process. Charles P. Baril, Luis Betancourt, and Nancy Nichols present new information on developments at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in “The New SEC Rules for Money Market Funds: Financial Reporting and Tax Consequences. The new SEC rules for money market funds are designed to improve their transparency and provide investor protection during periods of market stress. The latest update on “pushdown accounting for certain business combinations is provided by Kang Cheng and Rasha M. Elbolok in “Is Pushdown Accounting Lifting You Up? The update not only gives guidelines on the treatments of pushdown accounting but also streamlines the application of such accounting practice. Tom Pryor resurrects the age-old issue of human capital as an asset on the balance sheet in “Finance and Accounting's Glaring Omission. This article makes a case for treating human capital as an asset. Failure to do so distorts certain financial ratios and value representations in balance sheets. He proposes some solutions and identifies the potential payoffs. His human capital valuation worksheet is worth studying. Alan Dybvig picks up on the latest trend in using analytics in accounting. He sees value added in “Optimizing the Income Statement With Advanced Analytics. This article suggests that an optimized income statement (OIS) is the very embodiment of “advanced analytics and, as such, represents the next generation of financial planning. Alan can be commended for squeezing a little more information from an income statement. Peter O. Morrill, the old Marine, brings another interesting way of dealing with the continuing trials faced in business. In “Warfighter Skills, Peter draws on his experiences and lessons learned in the Marine Corps when dealing with sudden changes from expectations. Peter is the author of “Executive Warfighter, published in the July/August 2015 issue of JCAF. Self-service is creating a sea of change in customer service in nearly every industry—for external customers, for internal customers, and for corporate staff responsible for serving both constituencies. This trend is having salutary effects on corporate accounting and financial departments, primarily by reducing costs and increasing satisfaction of internal and external customers. Phil Binkow discusses this trend in “The Impact of Self-Service Applications on Corporate Accounting and Its Customers. FASB: Oscar J. Holzmann and Paul Munter, “Challenges in Achieving Convergence Between U.S. GAAP and IFRS—The Case of the Revenue Recognition Standard IRS: Caroline D. Strobel, “Tax Proposals for Multinational Enterprises Shirley Dennis-Escoffier, “IRS Issues Regulations on Performance-Based Compensation Exception SEC: Donald A. Walker Jr., “Whistleblower Cases and Confidentiality Agreements Respectfully, Jim Edwards Editor JCAF James B. Edwards, PhD, CPA, CMA, CIA, CMA, CGMA, CCA, CCP, is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. He has served as a corporate controller, partner in a CPA firm, vice president of a computer services firm, vice president of a computer software firm, and journal editor, as well as in management advisory services and corporate training.