In May 2020, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise established the North Carolina CEO Leadership Forum to provide private sector leaders with a venue to comment on the opportunities and challenges facing the North Carolina economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic has distorted business activity in the short term, it has also created new long-term growth opportunities for North Carolina. Next week, the Kenan Institute and the forum will publish the research white paper Seven Forces Reshaping the Economy. The full paper details seven major economic and business trends, or forces, the COVID-19 pandemic has produced that will permanently alter both the U.S. and North Carolina economies. This summary outlines those forces, the opportunities available to North Carolina and policy recommendations the state should consider to capitalize on a rapidly changing economy.
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.
In this paper, we compare several approaches of producing multi-period-ahead forecasts within the GARCH and RV families – iterated, direct, and scaled short-horizon forecasts. We also consider the newer class of mixed data sampling (MIDAS) methods.
A research paper co-authored by Kenan Institute Director Greg Brown is cited in a recent Bloomberg View post by columnist Matt Levine. The post, “Are Banks Worthless?,” looks at passive investing, the performance of banks’ investment products, and other current financial topics. Brown’s paper, co-authored with Söhnke Bartram and René Stultz, explores the reasons for historically low idiosyncratic risk in recent years.
This paper documents a set of stylized facts about leverage and financial fragility in the non-financial corporate sector in emerging markets since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Corporate debt vulnerability indicators prior to the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) attributed to corporate financial roots provide a benchmark for comparison. The firm-level data suggest that emerging markets post-GFC have lower leverage ratios than the five Asian crisis countries (Asian Five) in the run-up to the AFC.
Entrepreneurs making decisions under uncertainty are encouraged to evaluate their initial ideas through hypothesis testing, but entrepreneurial approaches vary in their emphasis on ex-ante theory development prior to collecting evidence. In this paper, we examine whether and how entrepreneurs benefit from adopting an evidence-based approach or a theory-and-evidence-based approach to decision-making.
On May 14, 2018, roughly 75 people gathered at the Rizzo Center in Chapel Hill for the 2018 North Carolina Tax Reform Summit. The event was hosted by the UNC Tax Center, an affiliated center of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.
We analyze why firms use non-intermediated short-term debt by studying the commercial paper (CP) market. Using a comprehensive database of CP issuers and issuance activity, we show that firms use CP to provide start-up financing for capital investment.
This paper documents macroeconomic forecasting during the global financial crisis by two key central banks: the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
How do cities attract mobile firms? The answer, frequently, involves beer. Dr. Maryann Feldman has recently published an editorial describing how cities are increasingly selling themselves on quality of life metrics, talent, and trendy amenities that appeal to young professionals. Responding to Amazon’s HQ2 contest, cities across the country listed breweries among their city’s assets while wooing the technology giant. The article is based on a paper that three of her students wrote under her guidance, and the inspirations for which evolved out of a seminar Dr. Feldman taught on science and technology policy.
The paper evaluates the performance of several recently proposed tests for structural breaks in the conditional variance dynamics of asset returns. The tests apply to the class of ARCH and SV type processes as well as data‐driven volatility estimators using high‐frequency data.
This research paper develops a substantial, large-scale database of building energy use, energy audit reports, land use, and financial characteristics in New York City to empirically model the hurdle rate for energy retrofit investments, using actual audit data per permitted renovation work.
This paper provides a first look at newly available data on the holdings of private equity (PE) funds. Because research has been hampered by the lack of comprehensive, high-quality data on portfolio companies, this new source offers the potential for a wide range of research.
Fueled by the widespread adoption of algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), the use of chatbots has become increasingly popular in various business contexts. In this paper, we study how to effectively and appropriately use chatbots in logistics, particularly in dispatching freights automatically.
Customer reviews are essential to online marketplaces. However, reviews typically vary; ratings of a product or service are rarely the same. In many service marketplaces, including the ones for solar panel installations, supply-side participants are active. That is, a seller must make a proposal to serve each customer. In such marketplaces, it is not clear how (or if) the dispersion in customer reviews affects the seller activity level and number of matches in the marketplace. Our paper examines this by considering both ratings and text reviews.
Ride-hailing services are an essential mode of transportation for millions worldwide. The rapid growth of this service has raised concerns about its environmental impact. To address these concerns, ride-hailing companies are adding or introducing environmentally friendly vehicles (e.g., electric vehicles) to their platforms. However, it is not clear how adding such "green" vehicles will affect the environment and customers. To our knowledge, this paper is the first to analyze this question theoretically.
North Carolina is a migration magnet. In 2018 alone, more than 87,000 people moved into the state. Perhaps the most stunning example of how migration has transformed the state is the city of Durham, a once-gritty town that made its name in tobacco and textile manufacturing.
This paper explores the ups and downs of innovation and productivity growth in the US economy and potential connections to the ups and downs of business dynamism and entrepreneurship over the last few decades.
Featured speakers and roundtable discussions will explore investment challenges and opportunities in 2018. Participants will include leading authorities in investment management, public finance, private equity, venture capital, and hedge funds.
Since graduating from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School in 2018, Elizabeth Berry has been working as an associate project manager at The Link Group in their Durham, North Carolina office. Read more about her post-grad experience.