We revisit the relation between stock market volatility and macroeconomic activity using a new class of component models that distinguish short run from secular movements. We study long historical data series of aggregate stock market volatility, starting in the 19th century, as in Schwert (1989).
Academics and practitioners alike recognize that user-generated content (UGC), such as blog posts, help not only predict but also boost performance (e.g., sales). However, the role of competition in the UGC domain is not well understood.
A panel from this year's Alternative Investments Conference discusses how venture capital is playing catch-up on ESG investing, "knowing what levers you can pull," and the opportunity for huge growth in this week's Kenan Insight.
Designing modern call centers requires an understanding of callers’ patience and abandonment behavior. Using a Cox regression analysis, we show that callers’ abandonment behavior may differ based on their contact history, and changes across their different contacts.
A February cyberattack targeting Change Healthcare resulted in the most extensive healthcare data breach to date, raising questions about industrywide risk management and regulation.
Taming the rising costs of prescription drugs has been a focus of U.S. healthcare reform for the past decade. High drug prices limit patient access while also contributing to higher overall healthcare costs. Recently, issues of how drug list prices are set, who reaps the benefits, and how those costs are passed on to patients have come under increased scrutiny.
The year ahead is full of economic uncertainty, but institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen knows that some topics will be in the thoughts of many business leaders and policymakers. Find out five trends he has in mind.
We consider an online retailer facing heterogeneous customers with initially unknown product preferences. Customers are characterized by a diverse set of demographic and transactional attributes. The retailer can personalize the customers' assortment offerings based on available profile information to maximize cumulative revenue. To that end, the retailer must estimate customer preferences by observing transaction data.
We study dynamic decision-making under uncertainty when, at each period, a decision-maker implements a solution to a combinatorial optimization problem. The objective coefficient vectors of said problem, which are unobserved prior to implementation, vary from period to period.
We study multi-period sales-force incentive contracting where salespeople can engage in effort gaming, a phenomenon that has extensive empirical support. Focusing on a repeated moral hazard scenario with two independent periods and a risk-neutral agent with limited liability, we conduct a theoretical investigation to understand which effort profiles the firm can expect under the optimal contract. We show that various effort profiles that may give the appearance of being sub-optimal, such as postponing effort exertion (“hockey stick”) and not exerting effort after a bad or a good initial demand outcome (“giving up” and “resting on laurels,” respectively) may indeed be induced optimally by the firm.
For more than 30 years, the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise has worked to leverage the private sector for the public good. At no time in our history has this...
Hosted by CREATE, the SBA, the UNC Tax Center and the UNC Entrepreneurship Center, this webinar experts will discuss how to determine which federal aid programs are best for your business, including the SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and others under the CARES Act.
UNC Tax Center Research Director Jeff Hoopes discusses how the tax system figures into the debt ceiling standoff and why we probably won’t see any dramatic increases in taxes anytime soon.
UNC Kenan-Flagler Assistant Professor Tim Kundro fields questions concerning how managers and firms can best foster a healthy working environment.
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.
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.
Despite positive labor market indicators, consumer sentiment has declined steadily in 2025 as fears of inflation rise. The result could be a reduction in consumer spending.
Pless, a Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow, will discuss the degree to which divestment versus continued investment in polluting industries might help drive the transition to a cleaner economy.
Pastor, a Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow, will discuss how green stocks — despite outperforming brown in recent years because of an unexpectedly strong increase in environmental concerns — have lower expected future returns than brown.
Join Steve Malik and the Honorable Sarah Bloom Raskin on October 10 at The Carolina Inn for “Risk, Uncertainty and Adaptive Resilience: A Fireside Chat with UNC Kenan-Flagler Dean Mary Margaret Frank."