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.
As a once-orderly world grows messier in the post-pandemic era, UNC Kenan-Flagler's Christian Lundblad discusses strategic planning for low-probability, high-impact events.
AI has become close to bewildering in its promises, met and unmet, its terms and tools, acronyms, “use” case examples of wild successes countered by duds and disappointments. There’s an overall lack of clear pointers for business leaders to shape the direction, priorities and pace of their organization’s AI activities. Over the past two years, we have explored the widening AI space; what stood out in our reviews is that there is today a lack of management perspective on AI.
The Biden administration has proposed several multi-trillion dollar initiatives to invest more federal dollars in infrastructure, education, healthcare and more. However, these big ticket items come at a significant cost, which the president hopes to cover through tax reforms. Proposed changes could affect individual income taxes for high earners, corporate taxes, international taxes and capital gains – and needless to say, the proposed reforms have drawn both strong critics and supporters. As dizzying negotiations and politicking continue in Washington, two of our experts unpack the proposed tax changes and their potential impacts on businesses and households in this week’s Kenan Insight.
Despite strong economic indicators—2.5% GDP growth, unemployment under 4%, and easing inflation—American consumer sentiment remains low. Kenan Institute experts explore why the public's mood doesn’t match the upbeat data, highlighting deeper sources of economic unease.
While the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating for many, research shows its impact was not felt equally. Black Americans experienced disproportionate health and economic ramifications, which compounded the financial, social and psychological strain many felt pre-pandemic, and have contributed to growing inter-generational wealth disparities. In today’s Kenan Insight, our experts explore whether the multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” plan proposed by the Biden administration holds the potential to begin closing pervasive gaps in American society.
As part of our 2023 grand challenge, we survey factors such as demographics, health trends, immigration and childcare that are essential to understanding the dynamics now at play regarding the supply of workers in the labor force.
The COVID-19 financial downturn will have short- and long-term effects on personal and consumer finance, as explored by a panel of Kenan Institute-convened experts during a press briefing held yesterday. The full recording of this briefing—along with a deeper-dive analysis on the specific implications of the downturn on personal retirement income by Kenan Institute Executive Director Greg Brown, is available in this week’s Kenan Insight.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put 18 million jobs at small businesses in the U.S. at risk – which could as much as quadruple the nation’s total unemployment rate. The effects of both the coronavirus and recent government relief programs were explored by a panel of Kenan Institute-convened experts during a press briefing held yesterday. The full recording of this briefing—along with a deeper-dive analysis on the specific implications of the financial downturn on small business employment by Kenan Institute Research Director Professor Christian Lundblad and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Professor Paige Ouimet—is available in this week’s Kenan Insight.
North Carolina’s 100 counties have experienced an uneven pattern of growth and development over the past decade or so, even during the pandemic, when the state was a magnet for migration. At one end, metropolitan and amenity-rich counties captured most of the growth between April 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021; at the other, 21 counties experienced net out-migration. Given these disparities, the Urban Investment Strategies Center offers an approach using targeted economic development strategies.
Research on resource dependence typically takes a static view in which actions and outcomes are determined structurally, but not as responses to the actions of the counterparty in an exchange relation. By contrast, this study addresses a question of power dynamics by examining whether mergers of organizations trigger responses from their common exchange partners. We predict that common exchange partners respond by withdrawing from the relationship and that their responses vary with the availability of alternatives, the value of the relationship, and the relationship history. Using data on advertising agencies, we show that mergers of agencies do trigger reactions from their common clients, and the reactions differ with agency and client characteristics. Extending existing theory and evidence, our results suggest that firms respond to the dynamics of exchange relationships and not only to their structure.
This article develops a case of economic development policy as an adaptive and improvisational process: effective policy is endogenous and the result of negotiations and power relationships.
The dynamic procurement problem has long attracted academic and practitioner interest, and we solve it in an innovative data-driven way with proven theoretical guarantees. This work is also the first to leverage the power of covariate data in solving this problem.
In today’s world of interconnected and "always-on" information, companies that succeed are those that compete by leveraging the advantage of strategic control points. A strategic control point is a part of a market where, if controlled by one party, it can be used to leverage power elsewhere. This can occur throughout the supply chain, in a related business, or even in an unrelated market.
Private labels (PL), also known as store brands or private brands, account for hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer packaged goods sales every year. PLs build store loyalty, improve margins and have been a key factor in changing the balance of power between retailers and national brand (NB) manufacturers. Thus, retailers around the world have a stake in pushing their own store brands. Yet, while PLs enjoy great success in Western, and increasingly Central, Europe, their performance is much more muted in the world's largest market, the United States, and in emerging markets. Why is that the case?
The increasingly open flow of goods and services has fundamentally altered the world economy and global power balances. It is also reshaping the American political system and our economic geography, providing clear and lasting benefits for some and negative impacts for others. This conference convenes thought leaders from the business community, government and academia to explore the core questions of the impact of international trade on society, the changing nature of work and economic productivity.
Sexual health campaigns are often designed “top-down” by public health experts, failing to engage key populations. Using the power of crowdsourcing to shape a “bottom-up” approach, this note describes 2 creative contributory contests to enhance sexual health campaigns. We provide guidance for designing creative contributory contests to improve HIV and other sexually transmitted disease testing.
Despite the rising power of developing economies, few corporations from emerging markets have succeeded in establishing brands in the West. The problem isn't just that they're late to enter the global market; the perception is that they offer poor-quality products, not next-generation ones. Conventional wisdom holds that they'll have to spend huge sums to overcome these obstacles. But some emerging giants, such as the Indian bank ICICI and the maker of the Mexican beer Tecate, are figuring out ways to build global brands on a shoestring.
“A storm is threat’ning….Gimme, gimme shelter.” The words of Mick Jagger were probably on the minds of many at the 2018 UNC Real Estate Research Symposium on October 11-12. As the remnants of Hurricane Michael came crashing through the Raleigh-Durham area, participants battled flight delays, cancellations and power outages to get to the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill.