The latest report from the Department of Labor showed continued robust job growth. Employers added 431,000 jobs in March. The news of sustained job gains speaks to the strength of the U.S. economy. Moreover, the labor force participation rate inched up slightly to 62.4% in March, from 62.3% in February, indicating more Americans are reentering the workforce. We still have a long way to go to resolve the imbalance between job openings and unemployed people, however, and this means that current issues of worker burnout will also linger.
The spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasuries – my favorite economic indicator – remains strongly in positive territory, suggesting a recession is not in the cards soon. This indicator has predicted all recessions since the mid-1960s, with a lead time of roughly one year, though the timing is inexact. The 10-year/2-year spread, which briefly inverted recently, is less reliable.
Female involvement in the workforce remains important to the U.S. economy, but COVID-19 has only exacerbated a drop in participation rates. To reverse the trend, businesses are enhancing maternity leave, child care services and access to fertility and family-planning services, according to research by UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School experts.
For small businesses, AI promises to handle financial and operational tasks, freeing up workers for other duties and creating new efficiencies. We offer seven focal points for small businesses planning for AI integration.
The destruction that Hurricane Helene brought to Western North Carolina in September, followed by this month's wildfires in Southern California, illustrates the financial risk that increasingly unpredictable weather can pose to homeowners and the insurance system.
Our 2025 Grand Challenge examines the skills gap – the difference between the skills that employers seek and those that workers possess – which is being driven by technological breakthroughs, demographic changes and cultural shifts in the workplace.
The argument that ESG investing generates more stable and higher long-term returns has come under scrutiny, including recent data showing long-run underperformance of ESG funds over the past five years. In this Kenan Insight, we provide some clarification based on recent research that revisits fundamental questions: why and how some investors take ESG factors into account in the first place.
Founder and Research Director, Institute for Private Capital; Van and Kay Weatherspoon Distinguished Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School; Faculty Director, Luther Hodges Scholars
A pooled Public Use Microdata Sample File of the Census Bureau’s Annual American Community Survey (2011-2015) is used to (1) create a demographic profile of the nation’s older adult population; (2) develop an older adult household typology which encapsulates both generational dynamics and diverse living arrangements; and (3) identify older adults who face the greatest barriers to aging in place. Policies and strategies that support and facilitate successful aging in place for the most vulnerable older adults are discussed.
American Community Survey data are used to develop typologies of the generational dynamics and living arrangements of the estimated 1.6 million U.S. older adult households who will likely encounter the most difficulty aging in place. Policy recommendations and strategies are offered to address the specific barriers and challenges that must be overcome in order for these older adults to successfully live out their lives in their homes and community.
Older adults will drive U.S. population growth over the next quarter century. Projected to grow four times as fast as the total population, older adults will make up of 22 percent of the population in 2040, up from 15% in 2015. We believe this population aging can be a new engine for innovation, business development, and employment growth in the U.S.
On October 27, 2017 the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted The Business of Healthcare: Adapting to an Aging Economy at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The conference brought together more than 100 attendees representing the diverse interests and perspectives of health care and elder care organizations, medical and pharmaceutical companies, patient advocacy organizations, government agencies and the academic research sector.
This research brief uses data from the 2014-2015 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) migration file to quantify the dividend North Carolina receives from recent movers to the state. We calculate the dividend as the differences in per capita adjusted gross income from those who moved to North Carolina (in-migrants) relative to those who were already living in the state (non-migrants) and relative to those who moved from the state (out-migrants). The dividends from migrants ages 55 and older, especially those settling in eight migration magnet counties (Mecklenburg, Wake, Durham, Buncombe, New Hanover, Brunswick, Cabarrus, and Johnston), are significant. This migration constitutes a strategic opportunity for both business development and job creation in North Carolina communities.
We use US Census administrative data to document important facts about wages at entrepreneurial firms. As in earlier studies, we confirm lower average wages at new firms. However, nearly two thirds of this decline can be attributed to differences in worker quality at new firms. Moreover, once we control for firm fixed effects, absorbing time invariant firm quality, the wage difference between new and established firms further declines.
In this paper, we seek to better understand how executives can intelligently combine modular and integrated problem solving processes to form the best possible strategy in entrepreneurial environments. To do so, we compare the efficacy of strategies formed via different processes under various market conditions, exploring the sources of significant performance differences. We address this question using NK simulation methods.
Extant literature highlights the importance of specific choices such as pricing and particular strategieslike “get big fast” for strategy in two-sided markets. Yet it leaves open how executives form a viable strategy in entrepreneurial settings, particularly when buyers, sellers, and product may be uncertain. With an inductive case study of 8 two-sided marketplace ventures in multiple industries, we developa theoretical framework that describes how entrepreneurs address this challenge: by focusing on successive strategic domains, beginning with supply.
In this paper we present a framework for linking smart products (with embedded real-time diagnostics and prognostics based health management capabilities) to a service provisioning system to create a system of ―self-aware product-centric systems. The framework includes a powerful ―learning engine capable of monitoring, analyzing and interpreting patterns of system/product behavior in real-time. The learning engine provides the capability of information feedback for real-time, ―in-the-loop control. This concept enables the service-provisioning network to provide customer services such as product health management at reduced maintenance costs, improved responsiveness to customer needs during use, and generally more efficient operations.
This research brief will (1) provide a background on new regulations that are driving the need for better data mining processes and tools, (2) describe the cargo screening and supplier validation process to illustrate the potential application of data mining, and (3) summarize current developments and research challenges in data mining for cargo security.
Our national security depends on a safe and secure food supply that is free of contamination, whether unintentional or the result of a terrorist act. In December 2006, Congress and the White House passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), establishing the goal of near-real-time electronic situational awareness to enhance early detection of, rapid response to, and management of public health threats in order to minimize their impact. Meeting this challenge for food safety depends on our ability to collect, interpret, and disseminate electronic information across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. While events such as 9/11 have elevated the need to share critical intelligence related to security threats, these events have also promoted the proliferation of multiple data systems and tools whose lack of interoperability hinders effective intelligence gathering and timely response. Further, most of the public health and food safety informatics work in the United States—from early detection of food-related outbreaks by local and state health departments to confirmation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through “fingerprinting” of pathogenic contaminants—takes place at different local, state, and federal jurisdictional levels. As a result, large gaps exist in our ability to meet the challenge of food safety in the United States with regard to PAHPA.
The investigations following the attacks of September 11, 2001, showed that our ability to verify a person’s identity is crucial to our national security. As pointed out by The 9/11 Commission Report (National Commission on Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States, 2004), travel documents are as important as weapons for terrorists. To carry out an attack on American soil, foreign terrorists must cross our borders—which requires passing an identification screening. A valid passport also allows a terrorist to obtain other valid documents (e.g., driver’s license, credit cards, health insurance card) that are important to performing normal life activities while maintaining a low profile and avoiding detection. Four projects, currently in different stages of implementation, use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Machine-Readable Zones (MRZ) technologies for verification and validation of identity in the United States. These programs are (1) e-Passport, (2) PASS Card, (3) Real ID, and (4) Enhanced Driver’s License. The use of RFID enables data to be stored electronically in chips embedded in identification documents and shared quickly in digital format by law enforcement personnel. Documents with RFID chips and a secure networking environment to exchange data are deemed more secure and less prone to counterfeiting than conventional, non-electronic documents. However, there is still debate about how to best balance the security benefits from RFID-enabled identification documents with concerns about privacy.