Career Opportunities

Research Analyst

Specific job duties include:

• Data analysis and modeling: Perform statistical analysis and econometric modeling to understand economic trends and evaluate policy outcomes. Identify, organize, and clean data using statistical software such as Stata, SAS, R, and Python among others.
• Research development: Conduct literature reviews on a broad set of economic and business topics in support of development of research papers, white papers, and reports.
• Team collaboration: Collaborate with fellow research analysts, economists, and other institutional stakeholders to scale-up the American Growth Project’s regional economic indicators and related content. This will involve participating in brainstorming sessions, contributing to research design, and engaging in regular discussions to foster innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to economic analysis and community development.
• Knowledge dissemination: As a research analyst, you will be expected to effectively communicate research findings to diverse audiences through both written and verbal communication. You will assist with writing white papers, Kenan Insights and commentaries, policy briefs, and other translational research materials.
• Project Management: Since this is a highly collaborative environment, as a research analyst you will be expected to effectively manage your components of projects, communicate project progress to team members and meet deadlines.

This position is contingent upon the continued availability of funding.

Research Associate

IPC’s mission is to promote a deep understanding of the role of private capital markets in the global economy. IPC brings together academic and industry experts who work together to generate new knowledge about private capital markets based on objective academic research. Findings are disseminated through academic publications, research symposia and education outreach. Central to the institute’s mission is creating new data resources which can be utilized by academic researchers. This effort fills a significant gap in the knowledge base of financial economics. For more information on IPC please visit: uncipc.org

The Research Associate will work with finance faculty from Kenan-Flagler and other leading business schools on high-impact research projects. The Research Associate will also work closely with and/or under the supervision of the research staff at IPC on both on-going data projects as well as specific ad hoc initiatives.

The Research Associate will support a wide variety of research-related tasks including (but not limited to) literature reviews; market and company research; data acquisition, cleaning, and econometric analysis; qualitative and quantitative data collection; data visualizations; and database administration support

Research Associate Professor or Research Professor

The role will translate complex economic data and forecasting results into practical insight for policymakers, county leaders, economic developers, business organizations, community colleges, workforce partners, researchers and other stakeholders. The Research Associate Professor or Research Professor will help determine appropriate modeling approaches, evaluate forecast accuracy, communicate uncertainty and limitations, prepare written research products, brief stakeholders, and identify emerging economic issues that warrant additional county-level analysis.

The Research Associate Professor or Research Professor reports to the Executive Director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (KIPE) and will work in close coordination with the Executive Director, who will lead the Initiative’s strategy, operations, partnerships, stakeholder engagement and public-facing growth. This position may supervise or provide functional guidance to economists, analysts, research staff, students or contractors working on forecasting models, economic analysis, research briefs, county profiles, dashboards or stakeholder deliverables.

The position requires strong technical expertise in applied economics, econometrics, forecasting, regional economics, labor economics, public policy or a related field. The successful candidate will help make the Initiative a trusted, objective, and methodologically sound source of economic intelligence for North Carolina.

This position is contingent upon the continued availability of funding.

Research Assistant Professor

The Research Assistant Professor will work under the direction of the Senior Research Economist and in close collaboration with the Executive Director, Director of Research Data Strategy and Analytics, data analysts, communications staff, faculty affiliates, and other Institute teams. The position will support the implementation of forecasting methods, evaluation of model performance, documentation of assumptions, preparation of forecast releases, and identification of emerging economic issues that require additional county-level analysis.

The role will focus on applied economic research related to North Carolina’s county, regional and state economies, including topics such as GDP, employment, labor markets, workforce skills demand, housing affordability, industry trends, population change, productivity, business formation, and other indicators relevant to economic development and public policy. The Research Assistant Professor will exercise independent judgment in analyzing economic trends, explaining forecast movements, identifying data anomalies, and preparing written and presentation materials for both technical and nontechnical audiences.

The successful candidate will bring strong quantitative, econometric, programming, writing and communication skills; experience working with economic and regional datasets; and the ability to help move the North Carolina Advanced Economic Forecasting Initiative from model development into a reliable recurring production, reporting, and stakeholder-support function.

This position is contingent upon the continued availability of funding.