On October 27, 2017 the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted The Business of Healthcare: Adapting to an Aging Economy at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The conference brought together more than 100 attendees representing the diverse interests and perspectives of health care and elder care organizations, medical and pharmaceutical companies, patient advocacy organizations, government agencies and the academic research sector.
This research brief uses data from the 2014-2015 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) migration file to quantify the dividend North Carolina receives from recent movers to the state. We calculate the dividend as the differences in per capita adjusted gross income from those who moved to North Carolina (in-migrants) relative to those who were already living in the state (non-migrants) and relative to those who moved from the state (out-migrants). The dividends from migrants ages 55 and older, especially those settling in eight migration magnet counties (Mecklenburg, Wake, Durham, Buncombe, New Hanover, Brunswick, Cabarrus, and Johnston), are significant. This migration constitutes a strategic opportunity for both business development and job creation in North Carolina communities.
We use US Census administrative data to document important facts about wages at entrepreneurial firms. As in earlier studies, we confirm lower average wages at new firms. However, nearly two thirds of this decline can be attributed to differences in worker quality at new firms. Moreover, once we control for firm fixed effects, absorbing time invariant firm quality, the wage difference between new and established firms further declines.
In this paper, we seek to better understand how executives can intelligently combine modular and integrated problem solving processes to form the best possible strategy in entrepreneurial environments. To do so, we compare the efficacy of strategies formed via different processes under various market conditions, exploring the sources of significant performance differences. We address this question using NK simulation methods.
Extant literature highlights the importance of specific choices such as pricing and particular strategieslike “get big fast” for strategy in two-sided markets. Yet it leaves open how executives form a viable strategy in entrepreneurial settings, particularly when buyers, sellers, and product may be uncertain. With an inductive case study of 8 two-sided marketplace ventures in multiple industries, we developa theoretical framework that describes how entrepreneurs address this challenge: by focusing on successive strategic domains, beginning with supply.
This study, sponsored by the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and the Kenan-Flagler Energy Center, analyzes the economic cost of renewable energy’s ‘last frontier’, providing reliable baseload power. The analysis utilizes five financial and energy models to examine the cost of replacing baseload power with various energy sources to achieve fully decarbonized utility scale electricity generation.
This research brief will (1) provide a background on new regulations that are driving the need for better data mining processes and tools, (2) describe the cargo screening and supplier validation process to illustrate the potential application of data mining, and (3) summarize current developments and research challenges in data mining for cargo security.
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.
Most Americans purchase food for their family’s dinner table with a high level of assurance that the food is safe. However, recent contaminations have brought into sharp focus gaps in our current food safety system and drawn attention to needed changes.
On April 1-2, 2016, the Energy Center at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill convened a conference on “Global Frac’ing, What has to Change for it to be a Game Changer?” It was an invitation only event with attendance limited to industry experts, leading consultants and responsible government officials. Attendees and speakers came from the U.S., UK, Poland, Mexico and Canada. This report summarizes the main points which emerged from the speaker presentations and subsequent discussion. It does not attempt to be a comprehensive treatment of Global Frac’ing. Rather, it raises four sets of questions and presents the conclusions which developed. The Executive Summary provides an overview of these conclusions. The appendices share details on two matters much discussed – what would be a model regulatory regime for unconventional development, and what would constitute a model fiscal regime?
Energy Geopolitics: The policies and interaction of nation states focused on their development, sale & acquisition of essential Energy supplies. It is focused on behavior of nation states, and concerned with vital role of energy in national economic life & security. This becomes clearer when we list the issues: Physical shortage, due to supply interruption or boycott; political blackmail, under the threat of interrupted supply; price spikes, due to tight market conditions or supply curtailment; economic development, fostering wealth creation & jobs; and environmental consequences, including Climate change.
Various areas are examined in regards to current energy policies in the new administration.
Jim Johnson presented at the North Carolina Local Government Budget Association's 2017 Summer Conference in Wilmington about signs of global aging, key drivers, and opportunities for economic development.
Like anyone trying to get something done with limited time and resources, economic developers have a lot of options to weigh when formulating a strategy to attract and retain businesses in their local economy. Over the years, economic development researchers have espoused a succession of theories as they’ve learned more about the many factors that influence economic growth. Historically, practitioners have tended to respond by focusing their efforts around what they perceive as the latest and greatest thinking, often at the expense of previously favored approaches. In practice, this has led to waves in which economic developers have focused on recruiting large, established companies or on fostering home-grown start-ups—but rarely both.
Using a large database of U.S. equity position-level holdings for hedge funds, we measure the degree of securitylevel crowdedness. The crowdedness factor is related to downside “tail risk" as stocks with higher exposure to crowdedness experience relatively larger drawdowns during periods of market distress. This tail risk extends to hedge fund portfolio returns as the crowdedness factor explains why some funds experience relatively large drawdowns.
In the past decade, coworking spaces have emerged as a new and promising phenomenon within entrepreneurship. Due to its prevalence, popularity and potential for disruptive change, coworking is increasingly relevant to theory, practice and policy in entrepreneurship, yet its implications are largely unstudied given its rapid rise. Overall, more data and analysis is needed to inform owners, policy makers and entrepreneurs about the effects of coworking. This paper is meant to increase understanding about the nature and value of this new phenomenon. In other words, it attempts to address the question: Does coworking work?
We model a dynamic economy with strategic complementarity among investors and government interventions that mitigate coordination failures. We establish equilibrium existence and uniqueness, and show that one intervention can affect subsequent interventions through altering public information structures. Our results suggest that optimal policy should emphasize initial interventions because coordination outcomes tend to correlate. Neglecting informational externalities of initial interventions results in over- or under-interventions.
Our briefing paper offers a perspective that centers on what we can reliably learn from the general direction of AI impacts on business change, rather than just speculate about. Only then can executives assess what AI points to for their firm’s development in its current and potential competitive ecosystem, leveraging its organization, technology and financial capabilities.
AI has become close to bewildering in its promises, met and unmet, its terms and tools, acronyms, “use” case examples of wild successes countered by duds and disappointments. There’s an overall lack of clear pointers for business leaders to shape the direction, priorities and pace of their organization’s AI activities. Over the past two years, we have explored the widening AI space; what stood out in our reviews is that there is today a lack of management perspective on AI.
In the run up to the financial crisis, the essential functions financial intermediaries played seemed to become less important. Commercial and industrial loans, as well as residential mortgages, the quintessential banking products, were securitized and sold.