This paper evaluates the pros and cons of including private equity fund investments in defined contribution plans. Potential benefits include higher returns and improved diversification as well as a relatively safe method for accessing investments previously only available to institutions and the very wealthy. Despite these enticing benefits, they need to be weighed against potential challenges and costs that may arise from creating this broader access to private funds. The complicated structure and uncertainty around the mechanism to provide required liquidity backstops may bring increased fees or even disrupt the private fund model.
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.
Much has been said (and rightly so) about the catastrophic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is another side to the crisis. It’s a story of hope, based on collaboration and innovation. As healthcare needs and economic hardships intensify, entrepreneurs around the globe are stepping up to create solutions that will not only address immediate needs, but also effect long-lasting change. A panel of Kenan Institute-convened experts discussed this surge of innovation in response to COVID-19 on April 7, 2020. The full recording of this press briefing–-along with a deeper-dive analysis on the drivers of innovation amid the crisis by UNC Kenan-Flagler Professors Mahka Moeen and Chris Bingham-–is available in this week’s Kenan Insight.
Voting outcomes can differ from underlying preferences due to strategic selection into voting. One explanation for such selection effects is lower participation of shareholders with popular preferences (free-rider effect) relative to those with unpopular preferences (underdog effect). We illustrate these effects in a rational choice model in which the voting participation decision depends on the probability of being pivotal and the costs and benefits of voting.
There is no doubt that the COVID-19 crisis has devastated the U.S. economy. But the particulars of this devastation are difficult to gauge, because unique aspects of the of the pandemic distort the data commonly used to assess such situations. In this Kenan Insight, we take a deep dive into the data to learn what it actually tells us about the economic impact of COVID-19, and suggest possibilities for a restart and recovery of the U.S. economy.
Defined benefit (DB) pension plans of both U.S. and European companies are significantly underfunded because of the low interest rate environment and prior decisions to invest heavily in equities. Additional contributions and the recovery of stock markets since the end of the crisis have helped a bit but pension underfunding remains significant.
In 2008, the majority of U.S. airlines began charging for the second checked bag, and then for the first checked bag. One of the often cited reasons for this action by the airlines’ executives was that this would influence customers to travel with less baggage and thus improve cost and operational performance.
Negotiation role-playing simulations are among the most effective and widely used methods for teaching and conducting research on negotiations. Teachers and researchers can either license a published, “off-the-shelf” simulation or write their own custom “bespoke” simulation.
On January 31 and February 1, 2019, the Frank H. Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise (Kenan Institute) hosted its Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Conference at The Breakers Palm Beach Resort. The conference brought together more than 150 academic research scholars, policy experts and private sector professionals to discuss and debate the most challenging current issues in the field of entrepreneurship in order to set the agenda for future research and policy.
In Part 1 of this article, economic incentives were estimated for relaxing the requirement that biocrude entering the refinery infrastructure be oxygen (O2)-free. It was concluded that an accurate estimate of these incentives is not possible without a significant amount of additional data. Part 2 examines key issues that must be addressed and the associated data needed for this constraint to be relaxed.
The Kenan Institute’s deep dive into stakeholder capitalism has exposed shortcomings in a key building block: ESG measurement. Our experts have explored the issue at length, proposing ways of refining these measures to produce structures that could meet the needs of multiple stakeholders while also working to design reporting free from political influence and agendas. As a next step, the Kenan Institute hosted a conversation featuring a business leader, investor and standard setter to discuss how we might turn these ideas into solutions to help integrate stakeholder capitalism principals into business and investment decisions.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has recently ramped up efforts to keep immigrants from entering the country and force out some who are already here – arguing these to be necessary measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 and protect American jobs. However, in this Kenan Insight, we summarize why these policies risk having exactly the opposite effect, harming the future health, social well-being and economic viability of our nation.
Immigration is one of the most contentious policy issues, and Congress has for decades failed to make any significant legislative progress. The result is an incoherent policy landscape and serious operational challenges on the ground. At the same time, immigration and immigrant integration are critical to U.S. workforce growth, government fiscal solvency, and innovation. I discuss key findings from the economics literature and their implications for where to focus immigration reform efforts.
We examine the trading behavior of particularly intensive traders, those who contribute the most to daily trading volume, and provide new evidence that is consistent with the presence of informational advantages. Using a unique Chinese data set of the most active daily market participants for each stock, we demonstrate that intensive traders’ buying (selling) predicts large positive (negative) abnormal returns, both unconditionally and, in particular, around key, value-relevant announcements.
St. Ledger’s speech focused on what she called the “high-growth mindset,” referring to taking advantage of opportunities that allow an individual to stretch beyond their perceived capabilities. St. Ledger said that adopting this mindset has been key to her personal and professional success.
In this paper, we propose a research agenda for psychologists in general, and scholars of culture and negotiations in particular, to address the key challenges of dealing with an increasingly globalized world from a psychological perspective. Building on an understanding of globalization in terms of cultural and subjective matters, we propose three research domains in which psychology scholars can contribute to a further understanding of our global society: (a) the effects of global contact on cognition and behavior; (b) hybridization and human agency; and (c) new forms of cooperation.
What do we mean when we talk about “inequality”? There are numerous ways to measure it, each method with its relative strengths and weaknesses, and we must be clear what we mean when assessing inequality for policymaking.
Join us as personnel from the Development Finance Initiative (DFI) discuss best practices for local governments as they consider implementing a loan program for small businesses. We will also hear from The City of Fayetteville and The City of Belmont, two communities who successfully created small business emergency loan programs to provide bridge loans to local businesses impacted by COVID-19.
The staffing of parallel servers in a queue has interested operations researchers for decades, resulting in countless mathematical models studying queuing behavior. But to achieve tractability, these models typically assume the service rate and productivity of individual servers is independent of other servers and the status of the system. We question this assumption and consider whether inter-server dependence impacts queue performance, specifically through server task selection.
The paper explores how the workload of emergency room physicians affects which non-urgent patients they choose to prioritize out of a full waiting room, and what the consequences of those decisions might be for both the doctor and patient.