Join us for the institute's monthly virtual briefing this Friday, March 7, as Chief Economist Gerald Cohen evaluates new numbers, fresh tariffs and the continuing effects of policy uncertainty on the economy.
Kenan Institute Research Fellow Greg Brown will discuss the effects of a slowing economy during the institute’s monthly virtual briefing at 9 a.m. EST this Friday, Aug. 2.
Join us for the Kenan Institute’s monthly virtual press briefing at 9 a.m. EDT this Friday, April 7, as institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen offers his insights on both the labor market and the questions surrounding March's bank failures.
Join us for the Kenan Institute’s monthly virtual press briefing at 9 a.m. EDT this Friday, Aug. 4, as Executive Director Greg Brown discusses whether declining inflation has put an economic soft landing back on the table.
Congressional disputes over discretionary spending escalate, threatening government shutdown. Join Chief Economist Gerald Cohen in a virtual press briefing at 9 a.m. EDT this Friday, Oct. 6 to discuss long-term budget risks.
Dive into the Kenan Institute’s monthly virtual press briefing from Friday, Jan. 5, as institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen offered some economic trends to watch for 2024.
With gas prices on the rise, inflation numbers will look less favorable. How should the Federal Reserve handle this, and what does it mean for the economy? Join us for a discussion Friday.
We examine firm disclosure choice during the initial public offering (IPO) roadshow presentation to understand the informativeness of a management presentation designed to attract investors. Although firms submit a comprehensive registration filing during the IPO, managers also prepare a roadshow presentation, which is shorter and typically allows managers more autonomy to select the information released and how it is discussed. We find that IPO roadshows have significantly more positive, less negative, and less uncertain language than the SEC filing.
The growth of the venture capital market should not blind one to its limitations as an engine of innovation. Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow Josh Lerner lays out three areas of concern worthy of more research.
The paper uses structured machine learning regressions for nowcasting with panel data consisting of series sampled at different frequencies. Motivated by the problem of predicting corporate earnings for a large cross-section of firms with macroeconomic, financial, and news time series sampled at different frequencies, we focus on the sparse-group LASSO regularization which can take advantage of the mixed-frequency time series panel data structures.
Throughout 2022, the Kenan Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill explored how ESG factors enter into and play a role in the decisions of corporate managers and investors. We have framed this analysis within the broader notion of “stakeholder capitalism,” a model in which business decisions reflect explicit consideration of their expected impact on a broader set of corporate stakeholders.
The investigations following the attacks of September 11, 2001, showed that our ability to verify a person’s identity is crucial to our national security. As pointed out by The 9/11 Commission Report (National Commission on Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States, 2004), travel documents are as important as weapons for terrorists. To carry out an attack on American soil, foreign terrorists must cross our borders—which requires passing an identification screening. A valid passport also allows a terrorist to obtain other valid documents (e.g., driver’s license, credit cards, health insurance card) that are important to performing normal life activities while maintaining a low profile and avoiding detection. Four projects, currently in different stages of implementation, use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Machine-Readable Zones (MRZ) technologies for verification and validation of identity in the United States. These programs are (1) e-Passport, (2) PASS Card, (3) Real ID, and (4) Enhanced Driver’s License. The use of RFID enables data to be stored electronically in chips embedded in identification documents and shared quickly in digital format by law enforcement personnel. Documents with RFID chips and a secure networking environment to exchange data are deemed more secure and less prone to counterfeiting than conventional, non-electronic documents. However, there is still debate about how to best balance the security benefits from RFID-enabled identification documents with concerns about privacy.
While technological advances have traditionally been a boon to the U.S. economy, the rapid rise of new platforms and the increased financialization of the economy in recent years have encouraged the growth of monopolies—driving an ever-widening geographic gap in the distribution of income across the country. New research from the Kenan Institute’s Professor Maryann Feldman explores the ramifications of this growing divide.
This paper examines the relation between tax enforcement and financial reporting quality. The government, due to its tax claim on firm profits, is de facto the largest minority shareholder in almost all corporations. Therefore, the government, like other shareholders, has an interest in the accurate reporting of (taxable) income and preventing insiders from siphoning corporate funds to obtain private benefits.
“Mega-threats”—negative, identity-relevant societal events that receive significant media attention—are frequent occurrences in society, yet the influence of these events on employees remains unclear. We draw on the theory of racialized organizations to explain the process whereby exposure to mega-threats leads to heightened avoidant work behaviors for racial minority employees.
When the human mind is free to roam, its subjective experience is characterized by a continuously evolving stream of thought. Although there is a technique that captures people’s streams of free thought—free association—its utility for scientific research is undermined by two open questions: (a) How can streams of thought be quantified? (b) Do such streams predict psychological phenomena?
A survey of family business owners conducted a number of years ago by John Ward, co-founder of The Family Business Consulting Group, found that lack of a shared vision for the family business and weak next-generation leadership were two of the top three threats to long-term family firm success. John’s finding was one of the inspirations for my own research on developing next-generation leadership talent in family businesses. In my study of several hundred family firms, it turned out that those two factors were highly related. A shared vision for the family enterprise was strongly predictive of the presence of effective next-generation family leaders.
The US Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Grand Challenge and the EU Human Brain Project Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship, though seemingly similar in many dimensions, have distinct features that have been shaped by politics and institutional systems. This article documents the history of the two projects and compares their organization and funding mechanisms.
This article utilizes a unique database (PLACE, the PLatform for Advancing Community Economies) to explore relationships between founders’ prior work experiences and the outcomes of their entrepreneurial firms.
This article examines the role of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in the context of marketing education, highlighting its substantial impact on the field. The study is based on an analysis of how GenAI, particularly through the use of Large Language Models (LLMs), functions. We detail the operational mechanisms of LLMs, their training methods, performance across various metrics, and the techniques for engaging with them via prompt engineering.