COVID-19 and the subsequent rise in work-from-home policies by firms have changed the landscape of skilled labor in the United States. The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes finds that 15% of employees are working from home full time, as of September 2022. This dramatic increase in remote work has led to an equally dramatic physical migration of workers across the U.S. Census data shows a sharp decline in populations of the largest U.S. cities and increases among midsize cities and smaller metro areas. For example, from 2020 to 2021, the counties of Manhattan (New York County) and San Francisco both saw a decline in their population of 25- to 54-year-olds by nearly 10%.
Prior evidence suggests that macroprudential policy has small and insignificant effects on the volume of portfolio flows. We show, however, that these minor effects mask very different relationships across the global financial cycle. A tighter ex-ante macroprudential stance amplifies the impact of global risk shocks on bond and equity flows—increasing outflows by significantly more during risk-off episodes and increasing inflows significantly more during risk-on episodes.
The pandemic taught us that equity investors would be wise to seek to invest in firms with resilient supply chains. But is there a reliable way to identify firms whose supplier-customer relationships are less vulnerable to disruptions?
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.
For some years now, environmental, social and governance investing has stormed the asset management industry with explosive growth. Tighter and increased oversight may finally bring it back down to earth.
George Floyd's murder caused many firms to reveal how exposed they are to racial diversity issues. We examine investor and firm behaviors after this socially significant event to provide evidence on the valuation effects of the exposure and ensuing corporate responses. We develop a text-based measure of a firm's exposure to racial diversity issues from conference call transcripts and find that, after the murder of George Floyd, firms with diversity exposure experience a stock price decrease of approximately 0.7% around the date of the conference call. We provide evidence that this effect is attributable to race-related exposure and not gender-related exposure. Initiatives taken by firms mitigate the negative market reaction.
A recent meta-analysis from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Professor Elad Sherf and co-authors examines the literature on "seeking behavior" at work – such as asking for information, feedback or help. Why does it matter and how can it be harnessed to the benefit of both employers and employees?
Companies face increasing pressure from different stakeholders to address various environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. In their efforts to engage with these issues, they might pursue symbolic or substantive actions, either pre-emptively (proactive actions) or in response to specific targeted threats (reactive actions). Yet we know relatively little about how different stakeholders react to this repertoire of corporate actions and importantly, whether they are aligned in their reaction. We ask this question in the context of gender inequality, an issue that has become salient due to heightened societal attention thanks to the #MeToo movement.
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) Policy Fellow - and former Chief Economist of General Motors - Elaine Buckberg outlines how electric vehicles can save the economy as well as the environment.
Pressure to create bottom-line outcomes has dramatically increased in recent years. UNC Kenan-Flagler's Marie S. Mitchell sought to untangle the relationship between supervisors’ bottom-line focus and unethical behavior in new research.
UNC Kenan-Flagler’s John Gallemore and co-authors found that, among other things, the complexity of the U.S. tax system has a disproportionately negative effect on small, domestic-owned and private firms.
This article examines the role of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in the context of marketing education, highlighting its substantial impact on the field. The study is based on an analysis of how GenAI, particularly through the use of Large Language Models (LLMs), functions. We detail the operational mechanisms of LLMs, their training methods, performance across various metrics, and the techniques for engaging with them via prompt engineering.
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.
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.
This study, sponsored by the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and the Kenan-Flagler Energy Center, analyzes the economic cost of renewable energy’s ‘last frontier’, providing reliable baseload power. The analysis utilizes five financial and energy models to examine the cost of replacing baseload power with various energy sources to achieve fully decarbonized utility scale electricity generation.
Universities are under tremendous pressure related to declining resources, flat enrollments, and increasing stakeholder demands. Strategic questions are surfacing related to resource allocation – how to connect investments to outcomes in an increasingly competitive and dynamic environment.