1/1/2022 — Although past research demonstrates that perceived fairness leads to many benefits, it also tends to assume that fairness flows almost exclusively from justice adherence. We instead reason that when employees form fairness judgments, they consider not only the extent to which supervisors adhere to justice but also why supervisors do so.

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations
• organizational behavior

12/17/2021 — Do founder-CEOs have an expiration date? In the wake of Jack Dorsey’s resignation from Twitter, some have begun asking whether the move could herald a new era, in which founders voluntarily step aside rather than sticking around for decades or waiting to be ousted. To explore the value added by a founder-CEO, the authors analyzed stock price and financial performance data from more than 2,000 publicly traded companies.

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

11/2/2021 — Public calls for a national paid sick leave policy continue to grow in the United States. In the absence of a federal policy, many localities and states enacted their own paid sick leave mandates. We document an average increase of 1.9% in employment following the implementation of a paid sick leave policy.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• labor

10/17/2021 — Following state-level legal changes that increase labor dismissal costs, firms increase their innovation in new processes that facilitate the adoption of cost-saving production methods, especially in industries with a large share of labor costs in total costs. Firms with high innovation ability exhibit larger increases in process innovation and capital-labor ratios, an effect driven by both increases in capital investment and decreases in employment. By facilitating the adjustment of the input mix when conditions in input markets change, innovation ability allows firms to mitigate value losses and is a key driver of their performance.

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

9/30/2021 — This paper studies how corporate tax cuts in developed countries affect economies in the developing world. We focus on one of the most prominent fiscal policies – the corporate income tax regime – and study a major U.K. tax cut as an exogenous shock to foreign investment in Africa.

• KEYWORD(S):
• global business
• tax

9/28/2021 — Financial hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are hitting low-income families in North Carolina especially hard, according to a new report released by the North Carolina Community Action Association (NCCAA). The study was commissioned by NCCAA to gauge how the pandemic was affecting its efforts to combat poverty and facilitate self-sufficiency in low-income communities.

8/25/2021 — Seven powerful demographic trends—analogous to gale force wind gusts in an adverse weather event—constitute potentially powerful disruptors of business and commerce in the years ahead. Four of the gale force demographic disruptors—slowing total and foreign-born population growth, white population loss, and declining fertility— have evolved over the past several decades.

8/24/2021 — Certification by analysts on a FinTech platform that harnesses the “wisdom of crowds” is associated with successful initial coin offerings (ICOs). We show that favorable ratings by a group of analysts with diverse backgrounds positively predict fundraising success and long-run token performance. Analysts’ ratings also help detect potential fraud ex ante. We document that analysts have career concerns and are incentivized by the platform to issue informative ratings. Overall, our results suggest that a market-based certification process that relies on a diverse group of individuals is at play in financing blockchain startups.

• KEYWORD(S):
• blockchain
• fintech

8/16/2021 — To increase revenue or improve customer service, companies are increasingly personalizing their product or service offerings based on their customers' history of interactions. In this paper, we show how call centers can improve customer service by implementing personalized priority policies.

• KEYWORD(S):
• management

8/16/2021 — We examine how mission-oriented grand challenges—formed to address the public sector’s unmet needs through development of new technologies and products for high potential impact—originate and catalyze industry incubation. Our analysis of six prominent cases identifies the incubation process, consisting of identification of unmet needs as a grand challenge, championing and articulation of a mission, leverage of private enterprise, and success or failure of the mission for subsequent industry emergence.

• KEYWORD(S):
• strategy and entrepreneurship

8/12/2021 — Over the last two decades, executive compensation research has focused primarily on equity-based pay and incentives emanating from executives' firm-specific equity portfolios, while generally ignoring cash-based bonus plans as a second order effect. Exploiting access to new data sources, there has been a revival of interest by accounting researchers in more deeply understanding the value adding roles played by bonus plans. 

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

8/1/2021 — The North Carolina Community Action Association (NCCAA) commissioned a study to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its efforts to combat poverty and facilitate self-sufficiency in low-income communities throughout the state. We conducted focus groups with individuals served by Community Action Agencies (CAAs) and conducted a corresponding set of key informant interviews with identified leaders in five communities across the state. The research focused on five themes. We generated eight key takeaways from our content analysis of the focus group transcripts and nine key takeaways from our content analysis of the transcripts emanating from our Zoom sessions with community key informants.

8/1/2021 — The psychology literature documents that individuals derive current utility from their beliefs about future events. We show that, as a result, investors in financial markets choose to disagree about both private and price information. When objective price informativeness is low, each investor dismisses the private signals of others and ignores price information. In contrast, when prices are sufficiently informative, heterogeneous interpretations arise endogenously: most investors ignore prices, while the rest condition on it.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance

7/19/2021 — Using United States tax return data containing the universe of individual taxable stock sales from 2008 to 2009, we examine which individuals increased their sale of stocks following episodes of market tumult. We find that the increase was disproportionately concentrated among investors in the top 1% and top 0.1% of the overall income distribution, retired individuals and individuals at the very top of the dividend income distribution. Our estimates suggest that, following the day when Lehman Brothers collapsed, taxpayers in the top 0.1% sold $1.7 billion more in stocks than individuals in the bottom 75%. This difference is equal to 89% of average daily sales by taxpayers in the top 0.1%.

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

7/6/2021 — We study the microstructure of the U.S. housing market using a novel data set comprising housing search and bargaining behavior for millions of interactions between sellers and buyers. We first establish a number of stylized facts, the most prominent being a nearly 50--50 split between houses that sold below final listing price and those that sold above final listing price. Second, we compare observed behavior with predictions from a large theoretical housing literature.

• KEYWORD(S):
• real estate
• strategy and entrepreneurship

7/2/2021 — This paper experimentally tests the Fox-Tversky (1995) source preference hypothesis as axiomatized in Chew and Sagi (2008) where people may have preference between equally distributed risks depending on the underlying sources of uncertainty.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• global business

7/1/2021 — For more than a year, researchers across the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) Kenan-Flagler Business School (KFBS) and School of Medicine (SOM) worked with Sharecare, Inc. (Sharecare) to establish a framework for measuring the true value of corporate well-being interventions and develop a measurement tool to quantify their impact over time. The goal of the research was to assess the value of implementing corporate well-being interventions to improve employee health and lower direct medical costs to employers.

• KEYWORD(S):
• healthcare

7/1/2021 — Financial markets reveal information which firm managers can utilize when making equity value-enhancing investment decisions. However, for firms with risky debt, such investments are not necessarily socially efficient. Despite this friction, we show that learning from prices improves investment efficiency.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance

6/24/2021 — To be effective, experts need to simultaneously develop others (i.e. provide advice and feedback to novices) and advance their own learning (i.e. seek and incorporate advice and feedback from others). However, expertise, and the state of efficacy associated with it, can inhibit experts from engaging in these activities or doing so effectively. We discuss when and why cognitive entrenchment and reduced perspective taking lead experts to hold misperceptions about others. We then explain how these misperceptions lead experts to provide less helpful advice and feedback to novices and to be less likely to seek and take input from others. We offer insights to overcome these barriers, enhancing experts’ ability to provide and propensity to seek advice and feedback.

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

6/1/2021 — Philanthropy by entrepreneurs remains an empirically underexplored topic. Combining datasets on U.S. based IPOs with individual philanthropic gifts, we empirically demonstrate that entrepreneurial harvests indeed trigger entrepreneurs’ philanthropic behavior. Furthermore, we distinguish how entrepreneurs’ approach to philanthropy differs from other individuals who experience the same wealth creating event. Entrepreneurs are able to transition more quickly to philanthropy compared to non-entrepreneurs, are more likely to invest in university science and technology, and also provide a greater number of gifts.

• KEYWORD(S):
• strategy and entrepreneurship

4/29/2021 — We introduce a new framework that facilitates term structure modeling with both positive interest rates and flexible time-series dynamics but that is also tractable, meaning amenable to quick and robust estimation. Using both simulations and U.S. historical data, we compare our approach with benchmark Gaussian, stochastic volatility, and shadow rate models, where the latter enforces positive interest rates.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance

4/21/2021 — This article introduces structured machine learning regressions for high-dimensional time series data potentially sampled at different frequencies. The sparse-group LASSO estimator can take advantage of such time series data structures and outperforms the unstructured LASSO. We establish oracle inequalities for the sparse-group LASSO estimator within a framework that allows for the mixing processes and recognizes that the financial and the macroeconomic data may have heavier than exponential tails.

4/12/2021 — Economic theory holds that competition drives innovation, improves the quality of goods and services, and lowers prices for consumers. Health care delivery is no exception.

• KEYWORD(S):
• healthcare

3/30/2021 — To what extent do consumers boycott in response to corporate tax activities? Anecdotes suggest potential consumer backlash is a meaningful deterrent to corporate tax planning, and the tax literature has developed expectations that these boycotts happen. But empirical evidence on their existence and impact is limited. We undertake a comprehensive study to examine how consumers’ purchase behavior relates to corporate tax activities, triangulating across several designs, samples, and measures.

• KEYWORD(S):
• tax

3/22/2021 — t that the currency denomination of the debt of large firms in developed countries is strongly associated with the geographical distribution of their sales. Furthermore, those firms exhibit significant home currency bias and international currency bias in debt issuance: controlling for the geography of sales, they borrow more in their home currency and the two most traded currencies, the US dollar and the euro.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• global business

3/4/2021 — We measure the racial/ethnic densities (RAEDs) of executives in a random sample of 523 US publicly traded companies and the S&P 500®. When we calibrate the RAEDs of executives as a whole against the RAEDs of the 2019 US population, we find that American Indians/Alaska Natives, Blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented and Whites are overrepresented. However, when we calibrate executive RAEDs against a benchmark that seeks to take into account key features of the demand for and supply of proto-executive talent, namely the RAEDs of the cohorts of students graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the broad New York Times 2017 list of the top 100 US four-year colleges and universities, matched to executives’ BA/BS graduation years, mostly different and at times opposite findings obtain.

• KEYWORD(S):
• c-suite
• race

3/1/2021 — This paper examines the spillover effects of U.S. unconventional monetary policy (UMP) on emerging market capital flows and asset prices. Affine term structure model estimates show that U.S. monetary policy shocks, identified with high-frequency Treasury futures data, represent revisions to expected short-term yields and term premia, especially during the UMP period. The policy shocks exhibit sizable effects on U.S. holdings of emerging market assets. These effects disproportionately manifest through valuation changes versus physical flows, are more pronounced for equity relative to bond markets, and are asymmetric between the quantitative easing and tapering periods, with flows more important during the unwinding.

• KEYWORD(S):
• global business

2/25/2021 — We propose and test a framework of private information acquisition and decision timing for asset allocators hiring outside investment managers. Using unique data on due diligence interactions between an institutional allocator and 860 hedge fund managers, we find that the production of private information complements public information. The allocator strategically chooses how much proprietary information to collect, reducing due diligence time by 18 months and improving outcomes. Selected funds outperform unselected funds by 9% over 20 months. The outperformance relates to the allocator learning about fund return-to-scale constraints and manager skill before other investors.

• KEYWORD(S):
• hedge funds

2/22/2021 — The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has brought into focus the limits on flexibility and innovation associated with market consolidation in care delivery. While anecdotes about the ossification in care delivery predominate, broader economic indicators point to the negative outcomes of consolidation.

• KEYWORD(S):
• healthcare

2/12/2021 — Despite advocacy from governmental officials and parents alike, we urge caution in the reopening of public schools before the coronavirus pandemic is fully under control. We are especially concerned about the premature re-opening of schools in impoverished and flood-prone urban and rural environments.

2/10/2021 — The slope carry takes a long (short) position in the long-term bonds of countries with steeper (flatter) yield curves. The traditional carry takes a long (short) position in countries with high (low) short-term rates. We document that: (i) the slope carry return is slightly negative (strongly positive) in the pre (post) 2008 period, whereas it is concealed over longer samples; (ii) the traditional carry return is lower post-2008; and (iii) expected global growth and inflation declined post-2008.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance
• inflation

2/6/2021 — We axiomatize subjective probabilities on finite domains without requiring richness in the outcome space or restrictions on risk preference through event exchangeability, defined in Chew and Sagi (2006), which was implicit in the prior literature (Savage, 1954; Machina and Schmeidler, 1992; Grant, 1995). We characterize the unique subjective probability representing the underlying exchangeability relation.

2/1/2021 — This paper presents an innovative approach to extract Volatility Factors which predict the VIX, the S&P500 Realized Volatility (RV) and the Variance Risk Premium (VRP). The approach is innovative along two different dimensions, namely: (1) we extract Volatility Factors from panels of filtered volatilities — in particular large panels of univariate ARCH-type models and propose methods to estimate common Volatility Factors in the presence of estimation error and (2) we price equity volatility risk using factors which go beyond the equity class namely Volatility Factors extracted from panels of volatilities of short-run funding spreads.

• KEYWORD(S):
• asset pricing

1/29/2021 — People of color are overrepresented relative to their shares of the total population in coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. The same is true for people living in over-crowded multigenerational households. Because people of color are more likely to live in multigenerational households than are Whites, the pandemic is having a double whammy effect in communities of color throughout the U.S.

1/28/2021 — There are bipartisan Medicare payment proposals that would reduce Medicare payments included in previous Obama and Trump budgets that could go a long way to filling the budget shortfall. While previous policy proposals either proposed new revenue sources or payment reductions, recent policies are pragmatic in nature and attempt to modify either beneficiary or provider behavior.

• KEYWORD(S):
• healthcare

1/22/2021 — Considerable scholarly analysis and media attention has documented the racially disparate impact of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Constituting 13 percent of the general population, Blacks reportedly account for 25 percent of those that have tested positive and 39 percent of the COVID-related deaths in the United States.

1/19/2021 — Background: Influenza imposes heavy societal costs through healthcare expenditures, missed days of work, and numerous hospitalizations each year. Considering these costs, the healthcare and behavioral science literature offers suggestions on increasing demand for flu vaccinations. And yet, the adult flu vaccination rate fluctuated between 37% and 46% between 2010 and 2019.Aim: Although a demand-side approach represents one viable strategy, an operations management approach would also highlight the need to consider a supply-side approach. In this paper, we investigate how to improve clinic vaccination rates by altering provider behavior.

• KEYWORD(S):
• healthcare

1/18/2021 — We study the impact of widespread adoption of work-at-home technology using an equilibrium model where people choose where to live, how to allocate their time between working at home and at the office, and how much space to use in production. A key parameter is the elasticity of substitution between working at home and in the office that we estimate using cross-sectional time-use data.

• KEYWORD(S):
• operations
• technology

1/8/2021 — We specify and estimate a time-varying Markov model of COVID-19 cases for the US in 2020. We find that the estimated level of undetected infections spiked in March and remained elevated through May. However, since late April estimated undetected infections have generally declined though it was not until June or July that detected cases exceeded the estimated number of undetected cases. 

• KEYWORD(S):
• covid-19

1/1/2021 — Theoretically, wealthier people should buy less insurance, and should self-insure through saving instead, as insurance entails monitoring costs. Here, we use administrative data for 63,000 individuals and, contrary to theory, find that the wealthier have better life and property insurance coverage.

• KEYWORD(S):
• insurance

1/1/2021 — Theoretically, wealthier people should buy less insurance, and should self-insure through saving instead, as insurance entails monitoring costs. Here, we use administrative data for 63,000 individuals and, contrary to theory, find that those with more wealth have better life and property insurance coverage, controlling for the value of the assets insured.

• KEYWORD(S):
• economic outlook
• finance
• insurance

1/1/2021 — The 2021 report explores the following: Initially, we explore the state of startups, small businesses and investments after a year – and global pandemic – have passed. Then we dive into one of the hottest areas today: health innovation. We highlight trends related to COVID-19, as well as other relevant topics, such as how AI and machine learning are impacting innovations in health. After that deep dive, we zoom out to explore broader trends related to investment structures, the impact of economic recovery funds distributed by the government, and other capital formation specific to entrepreneurs and small businesses.

• KEYWORD(S):
• strategy and entrepreneurship

1/1/2021 — When employees use public settings such as team meetings to engage in voice—the expression of work ideas or concerns, they can spur useful discussions, action planning, and problem solving. However, we make the case that managers, whose support is essential for voice to have a functional impact, are averse to publicly expressed voice and prefer acting on voice that is privately brought up to them in one-on-one settings.

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

12/30/2020 — We examine the impact of four classes of workplace interruptions on short-term (working hours) and long-term (across-shifts) worker performance in an agribusiness setting. The interruptions are organized in a two-by-two framework where they result (or do not result) in a physical task requirement and lead to a varying degree of attention shift from the primary task.

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

12/29/2020 — What are the spillover effects when central financial institutions with dominant market shares simultaneously halt their liquidity creation and risk transformation roles? To shed light on this question, we build a novel, comprehensive dataset. Firms without a history of debt financing exhibit limited exposure to a systemic event. For firms that rely on external debt financing, their exposures are mainly driven by pre-existing connections to these central financial institutions.

• KEYWORD(S):
• finance

12/28/2020 — Since 2001, the number of financial statement line items forecasted by analysts and managers that I/B/E/S and FactSet capture in their data feeds has soared. Using this new data, we find that 13 item surprises—11 income statement and 2 cash flow statement analyst and management guidance surprises—reliably explain firms’ signed earnings announcement returns.

• KEYWORD(S):
• accounting
• corporate finance
• finance
• financial reporting

12/10/2020 — Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are an important mechanism through which new technology is adopted by firms. We document patterns of labor reallocation and wage changes following M&As, consistent with the adoption of technology. Specifically, we show target establishments invest more in technology, become less routine task intensive, employ a greater share of high technology workers, and pay more unequal wages.

• KEYWORD(S):
• labor

12/8/2020 — The ways in which media news is slanted can shape beliefs about the economy, thereby affecting the decision to start a new business. Using exogenous variation in the introduction of Fox News Channel across US counties, I find that increased exposure to a pro-Republican slant during a Republican administration is positively associated with new firm creation.

• KEYWORD(S):
• economic development
• strategy and entrepreneurship

11/30/2020 — Public opinion polls reveal Americans are turning to companies with purpose and ethics to lead us through the profound anxiety and crises we are currently experiencing as a nation. We developed a corporate reputational equity checklist that will enable firms to brand or rebrand themselves as inclusive and equitable places to work, as well as position their companies as a collective of civically engaged corporate citizens poised and willing to address society’s most pressing ills, including systemic racism.

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

11/28/2020 — The patent system grants inventors temporary monopoly rights in exchange for a public disclosure detailing their innovation. These disclosures are meant to allow others to recreate and build on the patented innovation. We examine how the quality of these disclosures affects follow-on innovation.

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