Together with many business and economic leaders around the globe, we at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise support the harshest feasible sanctions against Vladimir Putin in the immediate interest of Ukraine and its people. More broadly, we view such measures as vital to the long-term survival of democratic values. But as the Russian invasion continues, seemingly unabated by unprecedented economic and financial sanctions, we must ask: what more is feasible? And for how long can such restrictions be sustained?
Kenan Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen discusses the power of productivity and what that means for the U.S. economy.
Our American Growth Project examination of skills in the workforce begins with a discussion of why skills are difficult to measure, then moves to a broad look at two ways to estimate the skill level across our Extended Metropolitan Areas.
A panel of experts convened by UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and its affiliated Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise will be offering a press briefing via webinar on the vital role state governments have played in response to COVID-19, the significant variance we’ve seen in responses state by state, and what’s next as governors and state lawmakers work with the federal government to fund relief while working to balance their own budgets. Join tomorrow, Tuesday, May 19, at 11 a.m. EDT.
We quantify the causal effects of humorous banter among three rival fast-food brands on Twitter in the context of a new product launched by one of the rivals (viz, the focal or entrant brand). We argue that Twitter banter can cause a surge in online search that in turn leads to higher offline sales.
Concerns about further supply-chain troubles are on the rise. Just a few months ago the “temporary disruptions” stemming from covid were predicted to work themselves out in 2022. However, businesses are now faced with the possibility of disruptions much more severe than those experienced to date. These stem from two sources: interrupted supplies in essential raw materials and agricultural commodities resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the potential for a rapid (and massive) spread of COVIC-19 in China resulting in suspensions to manufacturing operations there.
To find signs of productivity, we must first know where to look. Chief Economist Gerald Cohen describes how an area’s industry mix is key to its productivity and how adjusting that mix can drive more local growth using data from our American Growth Project.
Most retailers operate under the assumption that stabilizing employees’ schedules would hurt their financial performance because instability is an inevitable outcome of variable demand patterns in retail stores. We tested the validity of this commonly held belief. The goal of our experiment was to determine if it is possible to improve schedule stability without hurting financial performance.
Using data from two experience-sampling studies, this paper investigates the dynamic relationships between discretionary behaviors at work—voluntary tasks that employees perform—and internal somatic complaints, focusing specifically on a person’s pain fluctuations.
We examine daily leader sleep as an antecedent to daily abusive supervisory behavior and work unit engagement. Drawing from ego depletion theory, our theoretical extension includes a serial mediation model of nightly sleep quantity and quality as predictors of abusive supervision.
People often experience anxiety in the workplace. Across 6 studies, we show that anxiety, both induced and measured, can lead to self-interested unethical behavior.
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.
Task conflict has been the subject of a long-standing debate in the literature—when does task conflict help or hurt team performance? We propose that this debate can be resolved by taking a more precise view of how task conflicts are perceived in teams.
Retailers routinely allow consumers to negotiate a discount off the posted price for big-ticket items such as home appliances and automobiles, and on online platforms such as Amazon and eBay. The profitability of such a strategy, relative to selling only at posted prices, depends on consumers’ willingness to initiate a negotiation and ability to negotiate a discount. In this article, the authors incorporate consumers’ decision of whether to negotiate into a demand model.
This paper examines the impact of NPD make/buy choices on product quality using data from the automobile industry. While the business press laments that NPD outsourcing compromises product quality, there is no systematic evidence to support or refute this assertion.
As firms use advertising to gain product market advantages and increase their valuation in financial markets, disclosures of their advertising spending are influential — whether they erode organizational competitive advantages in product markets or signal quality in financial markets.
...study and public policy discussions. These responses include executive actions by the Governor and his/her administration, state legislative measures, and state reopening actions. In particular, we further document executive actions...
We examine firms' technological investments during an industry's incubation stage—the period between a technological breakthrough and the first instance of its commercialization. We develop stylized findings regarding knowledge evolution preceding product evolution in an industry's life cycle, and highlight the importance for managers to think about “success” and “failure” across multiple yardsticks of performance, rather than only as product commercialization.