3/7/2018 — Firms should disclose information on material cyber-attacks. However, because managers have incentives to withhold negative information, and investors cannot discover most cyber-attacks independently, firms may underreport them. Using data on cyber-attacks that firms voluntarily disclosed, and those that were withheld and later discovered by sources outside the firm, we estimate the extent to which firms withhold information on cyber-attacks.

• KEYWORD(S):
• accounting
• ethics
• management

3/1/2018 — On January 18 and 19, 2018, the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted its Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research Conference at The Breakers Palm Beach Resort. The conference brought together more than 100 academic research scholars, policy experts and private sector professionals to discuss and debate the most challenging current issues in the field of entrepreneurship in order to set the agenda for future research and policy.

• KEYWORD(S):
• strategy and entrepreneurship

3/1/2018 — Suppliers are increasingly being forced by dominant retailers to clean up their supply chains. These retailers argue that their sustainability mandates may translate into profits for suppliers, but many suppliers are cynical about these mandates because the onus to undertake the required investments is on them while potential gains may be usurped by the mandating retailer.

• KEYWORD(S):
• marketing
• supply chain
• sustainability

3/1/2018 — In this paper, we develop a sociodemographic profile of the most vulnerable African American older adult households. To do so, we draw data from the 2011–15 American Community Survey, which contains linked housing and person records for a 5 percent sample of U.S. population. This dataset literally allows us to peer inside of African American older adult households and in the process identify the major barriers or obstacles to aging in place.

• KEYWORD(S):
• aging
• disruptive demographics
• race

3/1/2018 — American Community Survey data are used to develop typologies of the generational dynamics and living arrangements of the estimated 1.6 million African American older adult households who will likely encounter the most difficulty aging in place. Policy recommendations and strategies are offered to address the specific barriers and challenges that must be overcome in order for these older adults to successfully live out their lives in their homes and community.

• KEYWORD(S):
• aging
• disruptive demographics
• race

3/1/2018 — The current research explores the relationship between living abroad and self-concept clarity. We conducted six studies (N = 1,874) using different populations (online panels and MBA students), mixed methods (correlational and experimental), and complementary measures of self-concept clarity (self-report and self-other congruence through 360-degree ratings).

• KEYWORD(S):
• global business
• organizational behavior
• socioeconomics

3/1/2018 — Crowdsourcing contests (also called innovation challenges, innovation contests, and inducement prize contests) can be used to solicit multisectoral feedback on health programs and design public health campaigns. They consist of organizing a steering committee, soliciting contributions, engaging the community, judging contributions, recognizing a subset of contributors, and sharing with the community.

• KEYWORD(S):
• crowdfunding
• ethics
• global business
• innovation

3/1/2018 — Using a dataset of 3,234 letters sent by 434 hedge funds to their investors during 1995–2011, we study what motivates hedge fund managers to make voluntary disclosures. Contrary to the hedge fund industry's reputation for opacity, we observe that managers provide their investors with an array of quantitative and qualitative information about fund returns, risk exposures, holdings, benchmarks, performance attribution, and future prospects.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• hedge funds
• investments

3/1/2018 — By almost any measure, marketing academia is in a better shape than it has ever been. Job prospects for PhD students have improved substantially in recent years. According to the 2017 Marketing Academia Labor Report, there were 1.83 candidates per new assistant professor (“rookie”) position compared to 2.85 to 1 in 2010. Moreover, there are 37 open positions for advanced assistant professors with only 14 people looking for such positions. The median 12-month salary for entry-level positions is $190,000, up from $162,260 in 2010. Colleagues in the School of Arts & Sciences, as well as most people in the government or private sector, would gladly enjoy such opportunities.

• KEYWORD(S):
• marketing

3/1/2018 — Although subsidiary disclosures in firms’ filings with the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC; Exhibit 21) represent the most granular required public disclosure of a firm's geographic footprint, little is understood about the quality of the disclosure, and anecdotal evidence suggests firms may not fully comply with the disclosure requirements. We use data provided by multinational firms to the Internal Revenue Service regarding their foreign subsidiary locations to explore the accuracy of public subsidiary disclosures on Exhibit 21 of Form 10‐K per SEC rules.

• KEYWORD(S):
• global business
• international tax

2/26/2018 — Although both businessmen and scholars agree that the practice of corporate finance and corporate strategy should be closely coordinated and logically consistent, a large gap exists between the two functions. Although MBA programs routinely cover both subjects, they employ very different analytical and decision tools and the interaction between the two bodies of knowledge rarely receives the attention it deserves. The resulting Finance-Strategy gap can lead strategically oriented firms to de-emphasize or even discard classic finance techniques such as Net Present Value (NPV).

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• strategy and entrepreneurship

2/26/2018 — Goals and the performance feedback on those goals are fundamental to organizational learning and adaptation. However, most research has focused on single overall, high-level organizational goals, while ignoring important operational goals farther down in the goal hierarchy.

• KEYWORD(S):
• organizational behavior
• strategy and entrepreneurship

2/23/2018 — Private labels have become ever-more important and are slowly turning into brands of their own. Retailers increasingly offer three-level ‘good, better, best’ private-label programs that include economy, standard, and premium private-label tier goods. For each of these tiers, retailers must decide under what name to brand their private label.

• KEYWORD(S):
• brands
• marketing

2/21/2018 — In this paper, we study the role of point-of-sale (POS) marketing mix variables in explaining variation in brand shares (i) at different retail formats, and (ii) across national and store brands in different price tiers. Stores in different retail formats differ in their positioning, the clientele they attract, and types of shopping trips made to the store. Further, national and store brands in different price tiers differ in the quality perception, and the contracts between the retailer and the manufacturer.

• KEYWORD(S):
• global business
• marketing

2/15/2018 — This paper investigates the extent to which the expiration of a temporary tax law makes corporate earnings harder to predict and understand. Examining evidence from eight separate expirations of the R&D tax credit, I find that analysts’ forecast errors and abnormal volume increase surrounding quarterly earnings announcements for firms affected by the R&D tax credit.

• KEYWORD(S):
• federal tax

2/14/2018 — Since 2001, the number of one-quarter-ahead financial items forecasted by analysts and disseminated via FactSet and I/B/E/S data feeds has risen from 5 to 170+. We show that the income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, ratio/other, and KPI forecast surprises related to this dissemination are strongly associated with increases in the information content of earnings announcements.

• KEYWORD(S):
• accounting
• earnings

2/8/2018 — Sharing economy has risen rapidly in recent years, and it imposes several challenges for policy makers. This paper examines how a pioneer of sharing economy — Airbnb — affects local economy. Using venture capital infusions as plausibly exogenous shocks to Airbnb’s expansion into a new county, we find that Airbnb expansion leads to poorer hotel performance in the local county.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance

2/7/2018 — We investigate Chinese firms’ use of variable interest entities (VIEs) to evade Chinese regulation on foreign ownership and list in the US. VIEs are explicitly designed to circumvent the intent of Chinese law on foreign control, and potentially exacerbate agency conflicts within the firm.

• KEYWORD(S):
• accounting
• global business

2/5/2018 — We propose a production-based general equilibrium model to study the link between timing of cash flows and expected returns both in the cross section of stocks and along the aggregate equity term structure.

• KEYWORD(S):
• equity markets
• finance
• investments

2/1/2018 — We use US Census administrative data to document important facts about wages at entrepreneurial firms. As in earlier studies, we confirm lower average wages at new firms. However, nearly two thirds of this decline can be attributed to differences in worker quality at new firms. Moreover, once we control for firm fixed effects, absorbing time invariant firm quality, the wage difference between new and established firms further declines.

• KEYWORD(S):
• future of work
• workforce development

2/1/2018 — Backhanded compliments seem like praise but can leave a sting. This study explores the psychology of backhanded compliments. Flatterers deploy backhanded compliments to garner liking while conveying social status. Recipients view praise of this kind as strategic put-downs and penalize would-be flatterers even as the backhanded compliment undermines their motivation and perseverance.

• KEYWORD(S):
• organizational behavior

1/29/2018 — In this paper, we compute conditional measures of lead-lag relationships between GDP growth and industry-level cash-flow growth in the US. Our results show that firms in leading industries pay an average annualized return 4% higher than that of firms in lagging industries.

• KEYWORD(S):
• accounting
• finance
• investments

1/24/2018 — In this paper, we introduce the role of big data in humanitarian settings and discuss data streams which could be utilized to develop descriptive, prescriptive and predictive models to significantly impact the lives of people in need.

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• operations
• socioeconomics

1/23/2018 — Since 1965, average idiosyncratic risk (IR) has never been lower than in recent years. In contrast to the high IR in the late 1990s that has drawn considerable attention in the literature, average market-model IR is 44% lower in 2013-2017 than in 1996-2000. Macroeconomic variables help explain why IR is lower, but using only macroeconomic variables leads to large prediction errors compared to using only firm-level variables. As a result of the dramatic change in the number and composition of listed firms since the late 1990s, listed firms are larger and older. Larger and older firms have lower idiosyncratic risk. Models that use firm char-acteristics to predict firm-level idiosyncratic risk estimated over 1963-2012 can largely or completely ex-plain why IR is low over 2013-2017. The same changes that bring about historically low IR lead to unusu-ally high market-model R-squareds.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• risk management

1/17/2018 — Organizations vary significantly in the rates at which they learn from experience (i.e., learning by doing). While prior work has explored how different categories of prior experience affect learning outcomes, limited attention has been paid to the role played by the organizational context. We focus on one important aspect of an organization’s context—goals—and examine how the degree of goal relatedness across an organization’s diverse set of activities affects the rate at which it learns from experience. In doing so, we argue that even where otherwise diverse activities are knowledge related, if they are not goal related, learning by doing is likely to suffer.

• KEYWORD(S):
• healthcare
• operations
• strategy and entrepreneurship

1/11/2018 — We use changes in real estate prices to study the sensitivity of CEO compensation to luck and to responses to luck. Pay for luck can be optimal when CEOs are expected to react to luck.

• KEYWORD(S):
• c-suite
• finance
• real estate

1/10/2018 — On average, competing retailers near Lidl stores set their prices approximately 9.3% lower than in markets where Lidl is not present, which is more than three times as much as was typically reported in other academic work on Walmart’s entry in a new market. This price reaction results, on average, in substantial dollar savings for customers. 

• KEYWORD(S):
• marketing

1/8/2018 — Financial intermediaries often provide guarantees that resemble out-of-the-money put options, exposing them to tail risk. We present a model in the context of the U.S. life insurance industry in which variable annuity (VA) guarantees and associated hedging operate within the regulatory capital framework to create incentives for insurers to overweight high-risk and illiquid bonds (“reach-for-yield”).

1/8/2018 — Operational systems increasingly rely upon specialized experts who can provide high-quality service. However, these experts, by definition, only address one part of an overall problem and so individuals are needed to coordinate the overall service provision. In many services, this coordination responsibility may be shared across multiple parties serving in the role of a gatekeeper.

• KEYWORD(S):
• data project
• healthcare
• operations
• technology

1/1/2018 — We use industry valuation differentials across European countries to study the impact of membership in the European Union as well as the Eurozone on economic and financial integration. In integrated markets, discount rates and expected growth opportunities should be similar within one industry, irrespective of the country, implying narrowing valuation differentials as countries become more integrated. Our analysis of the 1990 to 2007 period shows that membership in the EU significantly lowers discount rate and expected earnings growth differentials across countries. In contrast, the adoption of the Euro is not associated with increased integration.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• global business

1/1/2018 — We examine the trading behavior of particularly intensive traders, those who contribute the most to daily trading volume, and provide new evidence that is consistent with the presence of informational advantages. Using a unique Chinese data set of the most active daily market participants for each stock, we demonstrate that intensive traders’ buying (selling) predicts large positive (negative) abnormal returns, both unconditionally and, in particular, around key, value-relevant announcements.

• KEYWORD(S):
• global business

1/1/2018 — We show that in the years following a large broad-based employee stock option (BBSO) grant, employee turnover falls at the granting firm. We find evidence consistent with a causal relation by exploiting unexpected changes in the value of unvested options. A large fraction of the reduction in turnover appears to be temporary with turnover increasing in the third year following the year of the adoption of the BBSO plan. The increase three years post-grant is equal in magnitude to the cumulative decrease in turnover over the three prior years, suggesting that long-vesting BBSO plans delay, instead of prevent, turnover.

1/1/2018 — Negotiations are inherently dyadic. Negotiators’ individual-level characteristics may not only make them perform better or worse in general, but also may make them particularly well- or poorly-suited to negotiate with a particular counterpart.

• KEYWORD(S):
• organizational behavior

1/1/2018 — This research brief uses data from the 2014-2015 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) migration file to quantify the dividend North Carolina receives from recent movers to the state. We calculate the dividend as the differences in per capita adjusted gross income from those who moved to North Carolina (in-migrants) relative to those who were already living in the state (non-migrants) and relative to those who moved from the state (out-migrants). The dividends from migrants ages 55 and older, especially those settling in eight migration magnet counties (Mecklenburg, Wake, Durham, Buncombe, New Hanover, Brunswick, Cabarrus, and Johnston), are significant. This migration constitutes a strategic opportunity for both business development and job creation in North Carolina communities.

• KEYWORD(S):
• economic development policy
• migration
• north carolina

1/1/2018 — Older adults will drive U.S. population growth over the next quarter century. Projected to grow four times as fast as the total population, older adults will make up 22 percent of the population in 2040, up from 15 percent in 2015.

• KEYWORD(S):
• aging
• disruptive demographics
• inclusive development
• innovation

1/1/2018 — This article integrates relevant literature to develop a conceptual model on the potential avenues to achieve service excellence at low unit costs, which we term cost-effective service excellence (CESE). To gain a deeper understanding of these strategies, their applicability and interrelatedness, we analyze how 10 organizations have achieved CESE. Our findings show that CESE can be achieved through three core strategies.

• KEYWORD(S):
• knowledge management
• marketing
• technology

1/1/2018 — Marketing Science contributes significantly to the development and validation of analytical tools with a wide range of applications in business, public policy and litigation support. The Handbook of Marketing Analytics showcases the analytical methods used in marketing and their high-impact real-life applications.

• KEYWORD(S):
• marketing

12/27/2017 — Early results of an experiment at The Gap provide hope that there might be a remedy for one of the most controversial labor practices in retailing, hospitality, health care, call centers, and many other service industries: schedules that require employees to work different shifts every week, often with only three days’ notice of next week’s schedule. These volatile schedules can wreak havoc with workers’ child-care arrangements, school classes, and other personal responsibilities.

• KEYWORD(S):
• management
• operations
• workforce development

12/22/2017 — This paper argues that the seemingly lower returns on distressed stocks are partly the result of estimation bias and proposes an exact theoretical correction that can be applied in practice.

• KEYWORD(S):
• equity markets
• finance
• global business

12/16/2017 — Google Scholar tells us that, over a quarter of a million studies examine the relationship between CEO compensation and firm performance. Aguinis et al. (2018) take much of that work to task. Observing that the distribution of CEO compensation is skewed, they question any work that assumes a normal distribution. Correcting the flaw, Aguinis et al. (2018) conduct their own investigation of this important relationship. Contrary to previous work, they find no consistent empirical relationship between pay and performance. The authors review and discuss their work with a clear eye on its implications for improving our understanding of these relationships.

• KEYWORD(S):
• management
• organizational behavior

12/13/2017 — In this article, we develop a novel theoretical framework detailing what collective action problems and solutions arise in market formation and under what conditions. Our framework centers on the development of market infrastructure with three key factors that influence the nature and extent of collective action problems: perceived returns to contributions, excludability, and contribution substitutability. We apply our framework to diverse market formation contexts and derive a set of attendant propositions. Finally, we show how collective action problems and solutions evolve during market formation efforts and discuss how our framework contributes to strategic management, entrepreneurship, and organization literatures.

• KEYWORD(S):
• management
• strategy and entrepreneurship

12/8/2017 — Over 1960 to 2017, we show that a positive risk premium from holding high-beta stocks (versus low-beta stocks) and small-cap stocks (versus large-cap stocks) is reliably earned only after the expected stock-market volatility breaches an approximate top-quintile threshold. The high conditional average returns with this nonlinear risk-return phenomenon are persistently evident over months t+1 to t+6 following a volatility-threshold breach in month t-1.

• KEYWORD(S):
• equity markets
• finance

12/8/2017 — Puerto Rico’s unique characteristics as a U.S. territory allow us to examine the channels through which (sub)sovereign default risk can have real effects on the macroeconomy. Post-2012, during the period of increased default probabilities, the cointegrating relationship between real activity in Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland breaks down and Puerto Rico spirals into a significant decline. We exploit the cross-industry variation in default risk exposure to identify the impact of changes in default risk on employment. The evidence suggests that there are significantly higher employment growth declines in government demand and external finance dependent industries. An additional real effect of default anticipation is that heightened default risk Granger causes Puerto Rico’s austerity measures. An event study analysis using government bond yields and stock returns confirms that news of increased default risk increases the cost of capital for the Puerto Rican government and for publicly traded Puerto Rican firms.

• KEYWORD(S):
• decision making
• economics
• risk management

12/7/2017 — On October 27, 2017 the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted The Business of Healthcare: Adapting to an Aging Economy at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The conference brought together more than 100 attendees representing the diverse interests and perspectives of health care and elder care organizations, medical and pharmaceutical companies, patient advocacy organizations, government agencies and the academic research sector.

• KEYWORD(S):
• aging
• disruptive demographics

12/6/2017 — We construct a comprehensive panel of trading venue-level short sales and examine where short sellers exploit their information advantage. We examine the tradeoff that informed traders weigh between transaction costs and execution probability posited by Hendershott and Mendelson (2000), Ye (2011), and Zhu (2014), and find that short sales comprise a greater proportion of exchange trading than of dark pool trading. Furthermore, exchange short sales are more informative than dark pool short sales about future price moves. We find evidence of increased exchange short sales and exchange short sale informativeness prior to corporate news events. Finally, we examine the relationship between several market design characteristics and informed trade. The results provide direct evidence that dark pools attract less informed trade than exchanges do, particularly when information is short lived.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• investments

12/5/2017 — Focusing on a key CEO characteristic, materialism, we investigate how the prevalence of materialistic CEOs in the banking sector has evolved over time, and how risk management policies, the behavior of non-CEO executives and bank tail risk vary with CEO materialism.

• KEYWORD(S):
• accounting
• c-suite
• management
• risk management

12/5/2017 — Focusing on the ten countries with the most-traded currencies, we provide novel empirical evidence about the existence of significant heterogenous exposure to global growth news shocks.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• global business

12/5/2017 — Focusing on U.S. data, we show the existence of a significant positive link between uncertainty and reallocation of resources from private R&D-intensive firms to both tangible private capital and government capital.

• KEYWORD(S):
• economics
• finance

12/4/2017 — Using hand-collected data on succession planning disclosures, we study how having a formal succession plan affects the efficiency of CEO turnovers. We find that firms with succession plans have a lower likelihood of forced CEO turnovers and non-CEO executive team resignations.

• KEYWORD(S):
• c-suite
• finance
• management