As the historic 2020 U.S. presidential election draws nearer, voters are taking stock of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on their lives and livelihoods, and demanding that policymakers present their plans for economic recovery. In this Kenan Insight, we look at the major forces reshaping the U.S. economy and offer suggestions for forging an intentional and equitable path forward.
COVID-19 exacerbated existing shortages in the labor market, causing business leaders to revise corporate strategies designed to recruit and retain the workforce needed to compete in at the state, national, and global level. We must recognize and support the critical role our community colleges serve in meeting employers’ post-pandemic workforce demands if we are to close the skills gap in the current labor market.
From a family business that has grown to provide homecare services in 11 eastern North Carolina counties to a company creating oyster reefs to stop shoreline erosion around the globe, the power of small-business partnerships was on full display at the April 12 NCGrowth Spring Showcase at Rocky Mount Mills in Rocky Mount.
While the gender pay gap has received significant attention in recent years, little progress has been made to close it; in fact, in 2019, women still earned only 82 cents for every dollar received by their male counterparts for equal work. Policymakers in recent years have developed creative solutions aiming to close the gap, including bans prohibiting employers from asking for a job applicant’s salary history. However, in this week’s Kenan Insight, new research from our experts examines whether such well-intentioned bans are inadvertently lowering wages for all employees.
A recent trend in corporate culture has been an increase in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs meant to increase awareness of these critical issues and support underrepresented groups and minorities in the workplace. But what exactly is DEI, and how should we approach conversations about race and discrimination? On Friday Oct. 30, our Kenan Scholars engaged in a DEI training, led by Antoinetta Mosley of I Follow the Leader LLC, to answer just that.
We present institutional change as a creative and experimental response to emergent or competing logics.
...beyond. Director’s Council participation supports the institute’s core initiatives in entrepreneurship, dynamic economies and global commerce by funding programs, research and graduate student fellows. ANNUAL GIVING: Individual: $5,000 or above...
Why do investments in certain places yield jobs, growth, and prosperity while similar investments made in seemingly identical places fail to produce the desired results? Starting with the observation that innovation clusters spatially across a broad spectrum of industries, my work seeks to understand the mechanisms and institutions that promote the creation of useful knowledge. In my conceptualization, entrepreneurs, as the agents who recognize opportunity, mobilize resources, and create value, are key to the creation of institutions and the building of capacity that will sustain regional economic development.
Much attention is being focused on energy supply security issues, especially for European oil and gas supplies. The latest Russian decision to halt natural gas sales to Poland and Bulgaria has reinforced that continent’s awareness of the perils of unreliable suppliers. Europe’s short-term focus is on sanctioning Russia and then backfilling the forgone oil and gas from other sources.
Elizabeth City’s newest jobs creation partnership set sail literally and figuratively on Friday, Sept. 28, as two Coast Guard search-and-rescue boats took participants on a brief tour of the city’s harbor before dropping them off for a panel discussion and luncheon at The Center at Arts of the Albemarle.
Commercial real estate (CRE) is real estate held to generate income or used as an input into production by firms. It is notably different from other asset classes of a similar magnitude in that CRE is traded in private, illiquid markets. CRE is a hugely important asset class that has received less attention from the academic literature than asset classes that rival CRE in terms of sheer value. Yet pension funds, life insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds and other institutional investors seek the diversification benefits provided by CRE’s unusually steady income flow. The paper, “Commercial Real Estate as an Asset Class,” by Andra Ghent of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, Walter Torous of the MIT Center for Real Estate and Rossen Valkanov of UCSD’s Rady School of Management provides a much-needed overview of the CRE literature thus far, focusing on its attributes as an asset class.
In this edition of the Dean Speaker Series, join us for an engaging lunchtime keynote with Dean Mary Margaret Frank and Nate Holobinko on Friday, November 8, as a part of the 2024 UNC Business of Healthcare Conference.
On Thursday, March 28, about 250 private equity professionals gathered for the 12th annual Alternative Investments Conference, hosted by the Institute for Private Capital, to discuss portfolio positioning for the late-stage cycle environment.
Nikita Billman (BSBA '21) spent her spring break in Antigua, Guatemala working with the mission From Houses to Homes.
This article presents tests for the existence of common factors spanning two large panels/groups of macroeconomic and financial variables, and the estimation of common and group-specific factors. New analytical results are derived regarding (i) the difference in the asymptotic distribution of the test statistics when aggregating the data first and then extracting the principal components (PCs), or vice versa, as well as (ii) the estimation of the common factor and its asymptotic distribution, extending the work of Andreou et al. (2019).
Emerging artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities are ushering in significant changes in how enterprises operate – and raising a host of questions for organizations. In this Kenan Insight, we explore how changing the organizational mindset to treat AI as an “employee” may pave the way to fully reaping the benefits of AI systems.
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) Policy Fellow - and former Chief Economist of General Motors - Elaine Buckberg outlines how electric vehicles can save the economy as well as the environment.
Much has been made about the labor force participation rate, or the percentage of Americans over 16 who are working or actively looking for work — and for good cause, given the number of unfilled vacancies at U.S. firms. If fewer Americans are working, it is going to be harder for firms to staff all of their openings. Currently, 62.2% of adult Americans are working or looking for work. This compares with a historical average of 63.9% in 2019. With 259 million adult Americans, this 1.7 percentage point decrease in the labor force participation rate translates to a missing 4.4 million workers. And the narrative to date has primarily focused on how many Americans made changes following the COVID-19 pandemic (in response to lockdowns, layoffs, health concerns or care responsibilities) and the sizable fraction of these Americans who are still sitting on the sidelines. Given the steady drumbeat of news about how firms are unable to fill all their positions, there is much interest in how and when we expect these workers to return to the labor force. So, when can we expect them to join the labor pool?
Please join us for an exclusive conversation with Sharecare Co-founder, Chairman and CEO Jeff Arnold on Friday, Nov. 8. The event takes place in the Koury Auditorium and is part of the Dean’s Speaker Series, hosted by Kenan-Flagler Business School Dean Doug Shackelford.