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?
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.
The autonomous car began as an opportunity that required breaking all kinds of limits: engineering, navigation, adjusting to traffic conditions, distinguishing objects, predicting what those objects might do, reacting in time, calculating quickly and juggling a vast number of ever-changing variables. The developers used more and more computer power to address these needs. But the initial bounding limit turned out to be very fundamental; rule-based computers don’t have pattern power.
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.
We analyze the contribution of returns around earnings announcements to typical estimates of the “prices lead earnings” relation. We find that prior returns' ability to explain earnings is concentrated disproportionally in returns on earnings announcement dates, suggesting that a substantial portion of the estimated timeliness of returns in previous studies is empirically indistinguishable from the information content of earnings.
Private labels (PLs) represent a major opportunity for retailers, and a severe threat to brand manufacturers. However, considerable heterogeneity can be observed in PL growth rates across markets, creating ambiguity about their future growth potential. This poses a formidable challenge to both brands and retailers on how to allocate resources across different markets to prepare for the future.
On average, competing retailers near Lidl stores set their prices approximately 9.3% lower than in markets where Lidl is not present, which is more than three times as much as was typically reported in other academic work on Walmart’s entry in a new market. This price reaction results, on average, in substantial dollar savings for customers.
Chris Peronto is the Vice President and Head of Enterprise Strategy & Innovation at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. The MBA Healthcare Club sat down with the UNC ’91 Alum to discuss all things COVID-19.
The MBA Healthcare Club sat down with the KFBS ’98 Alum to talk about the impact of COVID-19 and the current uncertain economic climate, as well as how the investment banking industry continues to respond.
There is no doubt that the COVID-19 crisis has devastated the U.S. economy. But the particulars of this devastation are difficult to gauge, because unique aspects of the of the pandemic distort the data commonly used to assess such situations. In this Kenan Insight, we take a deep dive into the data to learn what it actually tells us about the economic impact of COVID-19, and suggest possibilities for a restart and recovery of the U.S. economy.
Governors across the United States have reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing state-level executive actions to address a range of issues provoked by the crisis. Although it is too early to gauge the long-term effects of the pandemic and states’ responses to it, this Kenan Insight provides a preliminary analysis of actions governors have taken thus far, to help inform policymaking going forward.
As federal, state and local governments struggle to reopen the economy as the COVID-19 pandemic surges onward, efforts to ensure people’s health and safety are seemingly at odds with attempts to spur economic activity. In this Kenan Insight, we explore how a data-driven approach to reopening North Carolina (and the U.S. as a whole) can help preserve both lives and livelihoods.
In recent months, mechanisms that have allowed for high-skilled foreign nationals to study and work in the U.S. have been put on the policy chopping block. In this Kenan Insight, we discuss why high-skilled foreign workers are critical to America's economic health, and why policies must continue to support their entry into the U.S.
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.
The arrival of two approved COVID-19 vaccines provides a clear path to the end of the pandemic that held most of 2020 hostage. But a recent resurgence of the virus and skyrocketing rates of infection indicate that a full return to normalcy—including the pre-pandemic work environment— is still months in the future. In this Kenan Insight, we examine the relevant factors that will determine when and how we go back to the office.
For more than a year, researchers across the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) Kenan-Flagler Business School (KFBS) and School of Medicine (SOM) worked with Sharecare, Inc. (Sharecare) to establish a framework for measuring the true value of corporate well-being interventions and develop a measurement tool to quantify their impact over time. The goal of the research was to assess the value of implementing corporate well-being interventions to improve employee health and lower direct medical costs to employers.
The North Carolina Community Action Association (NCCAA) commissioned a study to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its efforts to combat poverty and facilitate self-sufficiency in low-income communities throughout the state. We conducted focus groups with individuals served by Community Action Agencies (CAAs) and conducted a corresponding set of key informant interviews with identified leaders in five communities across the state. The research focused on five themes. We generated eight key takeaways from our content analysis of the focus group transcripts and nine key takeaways from our content analysis of the transcripts emanating from our Zoom sessions with community key informants.