“Every business I enter is looking for employees” was a common refrain in our Carolina Across 100 survey, with 79% of the total survey sample selecting employment/staffing concerns among their top three negative impacts of COVID-19 on their organization. Is the staffing shortage just a function of COVID-19 that will correct itself as COVID abates or are there larger demographic and economic forces at work? The answer is a bit of both.
Join the Leonard W. Wood Center for Real Estate Studies for the John A. Mitchener Housing Affordability Symposium on Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, at the Rizzo Center. Industry and academic experts will explore how the U.S. can combat increased housing costs.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, finding affordable housing was a persistent problem in the U.S. In this Kenan Insight, we look at the factors driving the nationwide affordable housing crunch, particularly for those most affected by it — low income, single-parent families.
It is generally accepted that operating with a combined (i.e., pooled) queue rather than separate (i.e., dedicated) queues is beneficial mainly because pooling queues reduces long-run average throughput time. In fact, this is a well-established result in the literature, e.g., when servers and jobs are identical. We consider an observable multi-server queueing system which can be operated with either dedicated queues or a pooled one.
Recent research has documented that industry concentration has increased significantly over the past 25 years, with potentially negative consequences for competition, productivity, and social welfare. Some have suggested that greater corporate tax planning by industry leaders, which can provide them with a cost advantage over their competitors, has contributed to this trend. As a result, policymakers are targeting such tax planning to reduce industry concentration.
We investigate the role of mindfulness as a regulatory factor by examining whether it mitigates the relationship between justice and retaliation. Drawing on theories of self-regulation, we integrate work on justice with emerging frameworks that identify mindfulness as an important work-related regulatory variable (Glomb, Duffy, Bono, & Yang, 2011).
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 symposium is hosted by the Active Management Research Alliance (AMRA), a multi-university initiative promoting research on active portfolio management strategies and alternative investments.
Interested in a recap of the Frontiers of Business Conference: Workforce Disrupted? Read the key takeaways and powerful insights from the conference's speakers and panelists on the 2023 grand challenge theme.
Research from UNC Kenan-Flagler Finance Professor Eric Ghysels attaches explicit costs to a model’s classification errors, in this case concerning pretrial detention decisions, avoiding the one-size-fits-all symmetrical cost function of traditional machine learning.
Using a large sample of nonfinancial firms from 47 countries, we examine the effect of derivative use on firm risk and value. We control for endogeneity by matching users and nonusers on the basis of their propensity to use derivatives. We also use a new technique to estimate the effect of omitted variable bias on our inferences. We find strong evidence that the use of financial derivatives reduces both total risk and systematic risk. The effect of derivative use on firm value is positive but more sensitive to endogeneity and omitted variable concerns. However, using derivatives is associated with significantly higher value, abnormal returns, and larger profits during the economic downturn in 2001–2002, suggesting that firms are hedging downside risk.
Despite decades of research on how, why, and when companies manage earnings, there is a paucity of evidence about the geographic location of earnings management within multinational firms. In this study, we examine where companies manage earnings using a sample of 2,067 U.S. multinational firms from 1994 to 2009. We predict and find that firms with extensive foreign operations in weak rule of law countries have more foreign earnings management than companies with subsidiaries in locations where the rule of law is strong. We also find some evidence that profitable firms with extensive tax haven subsidiaries manage earnings more than other firms and that the earnings management is concentrated in foreign income. Apart from these results, we find that most earnings management takes place in domestic income, not foreign income.
In kicking off the new year, we at the Kenan Institute want to highlight five topics we anticipate will be top of mind for business leaders and policymakers during the 12 months ahead.
UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Professor Jim Johnson, director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center, defines three groups facing challenges as companies return to the office and updates his forecast of demographic gale force winds.
In May 2023 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA or the Agency) issued proposed emission standards (the Rules) for existing and new Fossil Fuel-Fired Electricity Generating units. Issued under EPA’s Section 111 authority wherein the Agency asserts the right under the Clean Air Act and subsequent court rulings to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the new standards, if sustained, would accelerate retirements of coal plants. The Rules also impact utility plans to operate existing and to build new natural gas plants.
Andra Ghent, Professor of Finance at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, discusses the current state of housing affordability in an era of high interest rates.
In addition to academic presentations, the Conference on Market-Based Solutions for Reducing Wealth Inequality took participants out of the classroom and into the community for a walking tour and on-site discussions in nearby Durham, N.C.
Kenan Scholars Director Kim Allen is among the winners of UNC’s annual Diversity Awards, presented to individuals and groups who have given their time and effort to further diversity, equity and inclusion at the university and in its surrounding community.
An influential group of private sector leaders, university administrators, and government officials gathered at the Raleigh Convention Center on March 1st to craft actionable strategies to help the Research Triangle region attract and retain “C-Suite” talent to emerging high-growth companies in North Carolina.
In honor of University Research Week, Kenan Institute Director of Research Christian Lundblad discusses the importance of research from the perspective of Kenan-Flagler faculty, and how the school's international reputation is inextricably tied to the quality, relevance and creativity of its collective research agenda.