Economists and investors traditionally see uncertainty as a bad thing that suppresses growth and valuations, but new research shows that downstream uncertainty from customers in the U.S. supply chain can foretell expansion for firms and the economy.
The Research Triangle and the Piedmont Triad epitomize North Carolina’s economic evolution. The Triangle transitioned from legacy industries to high-tech manufacturing and experienced explosive economic growth; the Triad may be poised to join it.
What do we mean when we talk about “inequality”? There are numerous ways to measure it, each method with its relative strengths and weaknesses, and we must be clear what we mean when assessing inequality for policymaking.
Existing models of industry evolution describe a smooth pattern over time in which initial growth in the number of firms is followed by a sharp decrease due to a shakeout and an eventual stabilization as the industry reaches maturity.
Join Chief Economist Gerald Cohen for the institute's monthly virtual briefing this Wednesday, Oct. 9, discussing how the Federal Reserve employment report will impact future cuts.
This paper aims to advance the use of numerical experiments to investigate issues that surround the design of cost systems. As with laboratory and field experiments, researchers must decide on the independent variables and their levels, the experimental design, and the dependent variables. Options for dependent and independent variables are ample, as are the ways in which we can model the relations among these variables.
Since March 2022, the Federal Reserve has battled the highest inflation in decades with interest rate increases whose effects are only now starting to be seen. So does this mean the era of rate hikes is coming to an end?
Firms are increasingly launching initiatives with explicit social mandates. Often the business case for these initiatives is justified through one critical aspect of human capital management: employee retention. Although prior empirical studies have demonstrated a link between such corporate social initiatives and intermediate employee-related outcomes like motivation and identification with the firm, the relationship between employee participation in these initiatives and retention outcomes has not been investigated.
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.
Prior studies attribute analysts' forecast superiority over time-series forecasting models to their access to a large set of firm, industry, and macroeconomic information (an information advantage), which they use to update their forecasts on a daily, weekly or monthly basis (a timing advantage).
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!
...challenges and exciting opportunities for business today. We also disseminate cutting-edge research to academic partners, business leaders and policymakers, enabling them to make data-driven decisions and drive economic progress. In...
We evaluate sell-side equity analysts’ multiyear forecasted income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements, and the profitability, efficiency and leverage ratios that they imply.
The goal of this paper is to conduct a survival analysis to determine the causal impact of federal R&D subsidies on firms’ long-term survival.
Last month our home state of North Carolina was named “America’s Top State for Business” by CNBC (see the full ranking here). It wasn’t long after when some commentators pointed out that Oxfam had recently ranked N.C. as the worst state for workers. The extreme juxtaposition of rankings made me wonder if this was a coincidence or if there are systematic factors that make states good for businesses and bad for workers. Perhaps “right-to-work” laws, lax worker protection regulation or regional wage differences attract businesses looking to take advantage of areas with weak labor bargaining power. This in turn leads to business growth and thus job migration to states that are less desirable for individual workers. At the end of the day, economic planning should have the best interest of residents in mind when crafting business policy, so it seems worth unpacking what drives the rankings.
From investigating ways to improve the customer experience at centers housing families of children undergoing cancer treatment to examining how socioeconomic status affects individuals’ ability to accurately predict the viability of their financial investments, students in the Kenan Scholars MBA program showcased a wide range of business interests during the presentation of their capstone research projects on Wednesday, Dec. 12, at the Kenan Center.
The passage of U.S. tax reform legislation in 2017 had an effect not only on companies based in the U.S., but on foreign firms as well, with Chinese companies seeing the biggest negative impact and companies in South America generally benefiting, according to a new study that looks at daily stock market returns around key dates leading up to the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA).
...both current and forecasted national trends – but for far too long, our nation’s microeconomic data has been lacking. The American Growth Project is here to help. DATA Growth, employment,...
As the Consumer Price Index rises, businesses sound the alarm over supply-chain bottlenecks, and federal stimulus checks spur spending, the chatter around inflation is increasing. In this Kenan Insight, we explore what this potential perfect storm for an inflation spike could have on a recovering U.S. economy.
First, the good news. Given what we know about current economic conditions, it is likely that the consumer inflation rate has peaked in the U.S. for the current cycle. Recent inflation reports on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Implicit Price Deflator, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, show a jump to new 40-year highs in March but signs of moderation in coming months. For example, consumer goods with very large 12-month cost runups such as used cars and food away from home are starting to see prices moderate. Likewise, prices of important household goods like apparel, furnishings, prescription drugs and recreation commodities (think TVs and Pelotons) are flattening. Furthermore, some important energy prices such as crude oil and gasoline have stabilized in April after jumps in the first quarter. So, while inflation will surely remain elevated for some time, it is unlikely to get much worse.