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.
In this paper, we compare several approaches of producing multi-period-ahead forecasts within the GARCH and RV families – iterated, direct, and scaled short-horizon forecasts. We also consider the newer class of mixed data sampling (MIDAS) methods.
Time series regression analysis in econometrics typically involves a framework relying on a set of mixing conditions to establish consistency and asymptotic normality of parameter estimates and HAC-type estimators of the residual long-run variances to conduct proper inference. This article introduces structured machine learning regressions for high-dimensional time series data using the aforementioned commonly used setting.
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.
In our previous Kenan Insight, we outlined the major findings in our recent report, Seven Forces Reshaping the Economy. This week, we explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has upended education and childcare, ushering in changes to both that will last far beyond the current crisis.
Many Americans expect newly inaugurated President Joe Biden to achieve progress in improving the quality of the environment. In this Kenan Insight, we explain why we support these expectations, examining what Biden has already done in his brief tenure, the feasibility of the plans he’s outlined thus far, and whether (and how) he can propel the U.S. to a leadership role in sustainability.
As we approach the one-year mark of state-issued stay-at-home orders, the short- and long-term impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on state coffers is still being assessed. With businesses forced to close and unemployment at near-record levels, state policymakers are scrambling to find ways to make up for lost tax revenue. In this Kenan Insight, we look at both the challenges and opportunities for balancing state budgets in light of this new economic reality.
Some analysis indicates companies with diverse executive teams drive more revenue and are more likely to experience higher profits relative to their nondiverse peers, yet founding teams for both high-growth startups and the private capital groups that fund them stand in stark contrast to the U.S. working age population. Why? And why should it matter? In this week’s Kenan Insight, Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow Emmanuel Yimfor unpacks statistics on the composition of both high-growth startups and private capital groups, explores the economic and societal implications of their lack of diversity and provides suggestions to facilitate change.
In this week’s data commentary we’ll provide our usual review of health statistics, but primarily focus on what is an increasingly perilous juncture for both the U.S. and North Carolina economies. Specifically, the failure of Congress to agree on a new stimulus plan is feeling more and more like a game of chicken, with U.S. households standing between the onrushing vehicles. Hopefully, there is still time to slam the brakes on the rhetoric and approach the problem with solid economic logic.
An analysis shows the overall number of suppliers and countries supplying goods did not change significantly from 2019 to 2021. Companies did shift away from riskier countries like China, and delivery patterns also changed.
“A storm is threat’ning….Gimme, gimme shelter.” The words of Mick Jagger were probably on the minds of many at the 2018 UNC Real Estate Research Symposium on October 11-12. As the remnants of Hurricane Michael came crashing through the Raleigh-Durham area, participants battled flight delays, cancellations and power outages to get to the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill.
A panel of experts convened by UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and its affiliated Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise will be offering a press briefing via webinar on recent economic data releases which show the nation’s largest ever declines in business activity, employment and aggregate wages. Join tomorrow, Tuesday, May 12, at 11 a.m. EDT to hear from the following experts:
Join experts from Wells Fargo, First Citizens Bank, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise for a discussion on the North Carolina CEO Forum’s launch of a new framework to aggregate non-standard, real-time data to guide policy and business next steps. Join Tuesday, July 7, at 11 a.m. EDT.
Seventeen states have enacted salary transparency laws to combat pay gaps historically experienced by people of color and women, but the laws take different forms and have produced varying results. How does requiring companies to provide summary salary statistics compare with, for example, preventing companies from asking applicants about their previous salaries? Can such laws actually work against employees? Two experts address these questions and more in this week’s Kenan Insight.
The Kenan Institute and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s inaugural Conference on Market-Based Solutions for Reducing Wealth Inequality on June 1-2 highlighted research on market mechanisms that might also work to ameliorate inequality.
...featuring abstracts, posters and theses of the 2020 Class of Kenan Scholars, is located below. [topslider][topsliderslide kilink=”https://kenaninstitute.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020_Smith-1.pdf” kititle=”Does Gender Diversity Impact Firm Performance? An Examination of Law Firms and Revenue...
Generative AI such as ChatGPT holds the potential to alter many kinds of work, but analysis of a new report shows the occupations most likely to be affected are populated by more women than men.
Issues constricting the supply of workers, the sector-by-sector employment effects of a potential recession, the emergence of new technologies – these are the primary labor demand themes we’ll focus on in our 2023 grand challenge.
Using a sample of the 48 contiguous United States, we consider the problem of forecasting state and local governments’ revenues and expenditures in real time using models that feature mixed-frequency data. We find that single-equation mixeddata sampling (MIDAS) regressions that predict low-frequency fiscal outcomes using high-frequency economic data historically outperform both traditional fiscal forecasting models and theoretically motivated multi-equation models.