A large body of social science evidence indicates that objective, reliable and valid risk assessment instruments are more accurate in evaluating risk than professional human judgements alone. In the world of pretrial detention, where more than 10 million people are jailed each year in the United States after arrest, pretrial risk assessment tools may provide a more efficient, transparent and fairer basis for making assessments than having a judge quickly scan documents detailing the defendant’s prior record and current charges and make a decision in mere minutes. However, these assessments will retain any bias present in the data used by criminal justice agencies.
While the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating for many, research shows its impact was not felt equally. Black Americans experienced disproportionate health and economic ramifications, which compounded the financial, social and psychological strain many felt pre-pandemic, and have contributed to growing inter-generational wealth disparities. In today’s Kenan Insight, our experts explore whether the multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” plan proposed by the Biden administration holds the potential to begin closing pervasive gaps in American society.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “Chevron deference,” a legal doctrine that grants regulatory agencies authority in interpreting statutes. The decision could significantly alter the regulatory landscape.
For the first time since the tumult of the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates by 25 basis points on July 31. The decision was controversial along a multitude of dimensions.
Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Phillip Hettleman Distinguished Scholar and Area Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Abstract Thinking like an accountant isn’t just rote memorization of accounting rules. Rather, it’s developing the judgment and decision-making skills needed to form accounting estimates and evaluate financial statements critically....
With more business leaders than ever before embracing stakeholder capitalism – or the belief that companies should work to benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders – myriad questions have arisen about the concept’s viability and potential for impact. The Kenan Institute has been working to respond, and today we are excited to launch a new series exploring the most pressing issues surrounding stakeholder capitalism. Kicking off the series is this week’s Kenan Insight, which takes a deeper dive into the buzzed-about world of ESG investing. We hope you’ll check it out, and look forward to engaging with you on this topic and others throughout the series!
With a recent report from the United Nations warning that climate change has already begun to cause irreversible damage, experts during the 2022 Kenan Institute Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Conference discussed the role innovation can – and should – be playing to combat these ill effects. This week’s insight explores the topic through Q&A with Dr. Eric Toone, executive managing director and technology lead at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Dr. Jacqueline Pless, the Fred Kayne (1960) Career Development Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management.
The U.S. spends significantly less on child care than other developed nations, and the consequences of that spending became evident during the pandemic – particularly within underserved communities. In this week’s insight, our experts discuss why the U.S. should prioritize and fund early childhood education and care.
Join our panel of experts who will share their technological, legal and social expertise to answer the questions raised by the real-world performance of risk assessment instruments.
How do firms try to retain workers in a tight labor market? New research finds that employers use a variety of pay and nonpay mechanisms but that multiplant companies may find the nonpay options more cost-effective.
September 13 will mark six months since U.S. President Donald Trump declared a national state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 a national pandemic. And here in North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper announced last week that the state will transition to “Phase 2.5,” with further easing of restrictions on certain places and types of activities including mass gatherings, playgrounds and gyms, but with other restrictions – such as those on bars and entertainment venues – remaining in place. It seems like a good time to take stock of where we’ve been, where we are now and what lies ahead.
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.
There are few topics in business more current, more covered or more controversial than corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) responsibilities. Proponents claim a business’s adoption of such principles yields outcomes that benefit all parties, driving win-win scenarios for internal and external stakeholders alike. But critics dismiss ESG implementation as a performative PR ploy, and argue that considering such non-pecuniary factors in corporate decision-making is unsustainable. Our (independent, nonpartisan) findings indicate both sides of the debate are missing the mark – and in hopes of advancing more productive conversations, we introduce below a research-based model for examining the trade-offs of ESG adoption for businesses large and small.
We study a multi-armed bandit problem with dependent arms. The decision maker dynamically chooses an arm out of finitely many arms to maximize her total expected discounted net benefit over an infinite time horizon. Pulling each arm incurs a particular cost and provides a certain reward. Arms' rewards are dependent on each other through a common parameter unknown to the decision maker. Thus, by pulling one arm, the decision maker also collects information about the other arms.
Sekou Bermiss, UNC Kenan-Flagler associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, unpacks the topic of people analytics, discussing how firms can build better culture by supporting both managers and employees.
In his Frontiers of Business keynote examining the use of artificial intelligence, MIT economist David Autor sees a future where AI extends the expertise of workers rather than replacing them.