Kenan Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen kicks off 2025 with a rundown of five issues that will be top of mind for business leaders and policymakers, accompanied by his analysis.
We update an August 2023 piece in which we explain why manufacturing remains essential for economic growth and how manufacturing in the US today incorporates both regional shifts and “stickiness” in traditional strongholds.
Reeves Moseley, a political science and public policy double major with a minor in business, has always had a keen interest in public service. This past April, he had the opportunity to lobby on Capitol Hill with 80 other college students chosen to represent the Fraternal Government Relations Coalition.
Reeves Moseley, a political science and public policy double major with a minor in business, has always had a keen interest in public service. This past April, he had the opportunity to lobby on Capitol Hill with 80 other college students chosen to represent the Fraternal Government Relations Coalition.
Small businesses are an undeniable engine of growth for the United States, comprising 99 percent of all U.S. firms and driving nearly half our total economic activity. Yet small business owners across the country lack sufficient capital to succeed, grow and scale. The Kenan Institute has conducted a new analysis on the role of the Small Business Administration’s SBIC program in providing capital to the often-overlooked small businesses operating outside of metropolitan centers, as well as those owned by women and underrepresented minorities. You can access an overview of our findings, as well as key takeaways for business and policy leaders, by clicking below.
We are pleased to report that we have completed a spectacular year of growth and high-impact for the Kenan Scholars program.
Unemployment insurance has been a lifeline for millions of Americans who have found themselves out of work in the wake of the economic shutdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. But with federal, state and local government coffers strained, the time has come for short-time compensation (STC) and partial unemployment insurance programs to receive a closer look. In this Kenan Insight, we explore how these little-known initiatives can benefit both employees and employers and provide relief to an ailing U.S. economy.
2020 brought an end to North Carolina’s decade-long economic expansion that began in 2010 after the Great Recession. It has now been a year since COVID-19 arrived on U.S. shores, and we can see some changes clearly, while others are just starting to emerge from the haze. It will likely be years before we fully grasp the myriad ways COVID-19 has affected the nation’s and the state’s economies. Now seems like a good time to take stock of the fallout from 2020, the trends we’re seeing a year into the crisis and where things are starting to turn around for North Carolina.
North Carolina’s 100 counties have experienced an uneven pattern of growth and development over the past decade or so, even during the pandemic, when the state was a magnet for migration. At one end, metropolitan and amenity-rich counties captured most of the growth between April 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021; at the other, 21 counties experienced net out-migration. Given these disparities, the Urban Investment Strategies Center offers an approach using targeted economic development strategies.
The new report from the Kenan Institute's American Growth Project takes a look under the hood at productivity - and which U.S. cities have been climbing up the productivity rankings.
Soon after releasing the American Growth Project’s February report on projected economic growth for U.S. midsize cities, we realized several places near the top of our rankings featured prominently in songs. Naturally, a playlist was born.
We consider an electric utility company that serves retail electricity customers over a discrete-time horizon. In each period, the company observes the customers' consumption as well as high-dimensional features on customer characteristics and exogenous factors. A distinctive element of our work is that these features exhibit three types of heterogeneity—over time, customers, or both. Based on the consumption and feature observations, the company can dynamically adjust the retail electricity price at the customer level.
Research Economist Sarah Dickerson shared news of healthy jobs numbers from June and looked at the effects of a decrease in foreign-born workers on new home construction.
The Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise will host its Annual Open House Thursday, September 7, during which the newly re-envisioned business policy think tank and its affiliated centers will educate and engage with the UNC-Chapel Hill community and beyond.
Much is known about the importance of learning and some of the distinct learning processes that organizations use (e.g., trial-and-error learning, vicarious learning, experimental learning, and improvisational learning). Yet surprisingly little is known about whether these processes combine over time in ordered ways, because most research on learning explores one particular process. Using theory elaboration and theory-building methods and data on the accumulated country entries of entrepreneurial firms, we address this gap. Our core contribution is an emergent theoretical framework that develops the concept of learning sequences. We find that learning sequences exist and are influenced by initial conditions.
Schemas are a central concept in strategy and organization theory. Yet, despite the importance of schemas, little is known about how they emerge. Our in-depth historical analysis of how groups in the life insurance industry developed their schema for the computer from 1945-1975 addresses this gap. We identify three key processes--assimilation, deconstruction, and unitization--that collectively explain and resolve an inherent tension related to schema emergence: how to make the unfamiliar familiar but conceptually distinct. We also find that each process relates to analogical transfer, but in a more pluralistic and dynamic way than the existing literature describes. Broadly, these findings have important implications for organizational change and managerial cognition.
Still in its infancy, the Hospital Compare overall hospital quality star rating program introduced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has generated intense industry debate.
UNC Professor Mohammad Jarrahi and IBM’s Phaedra Boinodiris address concerns about organizational adoption of artificial intelligence and how to include employees in important discussions, such as ethical considerations and potential job-related changes.
Greater focus on social justice has brought systemic inequities in the corporate sector to light, leading companies to step up their efforts in attracting and retaining a diverse workforce – but many challenges remain in implementing those goals. Following a joint report between the Kenan Institute and EY, this week’s Kenan Insight breaks down some challenges companies may face while trying to reach their diversity, equity and inclusion goals.