Many Americans expect newly inaugurated President Joe Biden to achieve progress in improving the quality of the environment. In this Kenan Insight, we explain why we support these expectations, examining what Biden has already done in his brief tenure, the feasibility of the plans he’s outlined thus far, and whether (and how) he can propel the U.S. to a leadership role in sustainability.
Despite advocacy from governmental officials and parents alike, we urge caution in the reopening of public schools before the coronavirus pandemic is fully under control. We are especially concerned about the premature re-opening of schools in impoverished and flood-prone urban and rural environments.
During the past 40 years, the income gap between top and bottom earners has expanded exponentially, with the top 1% controlling about 20% of national income and the bottom 50% holding less than 13%. In this Kenan Insight, we examine the role of two factors contributing to regional inequalities in the U.S and Europe: job automation and telecommuting.
Seven powerful demographic trends—analogous to gale force wind gusts in an adverse weather event—constitute potentially powerful disruptors of business and commerce in the years ahead. Four of the gale force demographic disruptors—slowing total and foreign-born population growth, white population loss, and declining fertility— have evolved over the past several decades.
Financial hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are hitting low-income families in North Carolina especially hard, according to a new report released by the North Carolina Community Action Association (NCCAA). The study was commissioned by NCCAA to gauge how the pandemic was affecting its efforts to combat poverty and facilitate self-sufficiency in low-income communities.
As we return to a new normal post-pandemic, organizational and individual work arrangements will have to be designed to take into account that employees will range from not wanting to give up their autonomy of working from home to those who will want to come rushing back to the physical office. However, a large swath of the workforce will be somewhere in the middle. They would like to mix and match the benefits of working remotely and the advantages of coming to physical offices.
This report catalogs work by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, in conjunction with the North Carolina CEO Leadership Forum, to distill insights from top academic researchers, business leaders and policy experts on how the economy is changing and what this means for the future of North Carolina. We describe seven forces currently reshaping the U.S. (and in some cases, global) economy.
In May 2020, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise established the North Carolina CEO Leadership Forum to provide private sector leaders with a venue to comment on the opportunities and challenges facing the North Carolina economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic has distorted business activity in the short term, it has also created new long-term growth opportunities for North Carolina. Next week, the Kenan Institute and the forum will publish the research white paper Seven Forces Reshaping the Economy. The full paper details seven major economic and business trends, or forces, the COVID-19 pandemic has produced that will permanently alter both the U.S. and North Carolina economies. This summary outlines those forces, the opportunities available to North Carolina and policy recommendations the state should consider to capitalize on a rapidly changing economy.
This report catalogs work by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, in conjunction with the North Carolina CEO Leadership Forum, to distill insights from top academic researchers, business leaders and policy experts on how the economy is changing and what this means for the future of North Carolina. We describe seven forces currently reshaping the U.S. (and in some cases, global) economy.
The 2021 report explores the following: Initially, we explore the state of startups, small businesses and investments after a year – and global pandemic – have passed. Then we dive into one of the hottest areas today: health innovation. We highlight trends related to COVID-19, as well as other relevant topics, such as how AI and machine learning are impacting innovations in health. After that deep dive, we zoom out to explore broader trends related to investment structures, the impact of economic recovery funds distributed by the government, and other capital formation specific to entrepreneurs and small businesses.
The Trends in Entrepreneurship Report brings together expertise and data from academia, industry and policy to highlight relevant topics facing entrepreneurs and investors today. For the 2022 annual report, we invited researchers to submit trends based on their own emerging research. We welcomed submissions related to current topics in entrepreneurship, with a particular interest on trends related to funding; ecosystems; teams and talent; emerging technologies; and addressing diversity, equity and inclusion in entrepreneurship and small business. Each trend was reviewed for quality and relevance by our editorial board
Federal, state and local governments acted quickly to assist businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, because the category of “small business” is defined so broadly, stimulus money did not always reach the intended recipients. The government’s definition of small business includes firms with fewer than 500 employees — which, taken together, represent a broad collection of different types of businesses with very different needs.
In financial markets, forward contracts reflect market perception of future price dynamics. Nontransparent markets, like commercial real estate investments, lack such tools. We use a panel of NYC office leases between 2005 and 2016 to estimate a dynamic term structure of forward lease rates (rental revenues), which reflects changing expectations by tenants and landlords about future rental contract conditions.
As of 2019, salary history bans were enacted by 17 states and Puerto Rico with the stated purpose of reducing the gender pay gap. We argue that salary history bans may negatively affect wages as employers lose an informative signal of worker productivity. We empirically evaluate these laws using a large panel dataset of disaggregated wages covering all public-sector employees in 36 states and find, on average, that salary history bans lead to a 3% decrease in new-hire wages.
Financial markets reveal information which firm managers can utilize when making equity value-enhancing investment decisions. However, for firms with risky debt, such investments are not necessarily socially efficient. Despite this friction, we show that learning from prices improves investment efficiency.
Post 2020 Census population estimates covering the first fifteen months of the pandemic are analyzed. The results reveal COVID-19’s impact on the geo-demography of the state, highlight disturbing demographic trends, and raise pressing questions requiring immediate policy attention if North Carolina is to remain attractive as a place to live, work, play, and do business.
We study the relation between trade credit, asset prices, and production-network linkages. Empirically, firms extending more trade credit earn 7.6% p.a. lower risk premiums and maintain longer relationships with customers.
The data-generating process of productivity growth includes both trend and business-cycle shocks, generating many counterfactuals for prices under full-information. In practice, agents cannot immediately distinguish between the two shocks, leading to "rational confusion": each shock inherits properties of its counterpart.
As a magnet for both population and employment growth, North Carolina has a propitious opportunity to create an inclusive and equitable entrepreneurial and small business ecosystem to support the state’s newfound prosperity.