We conduct a field-experiment at an automobile spare-parts retailer to examine the profit implications of providing discretionary power to managers.
Speed is often critical for successful commercialization of a new technology, and patents help entrepreneurs secure funding, enter the market, and avoid expropriation of their ideas. In this article, we employ a recent change to U.S. patent law—the introduction of an elective program accelerating patent examination—to investigate the role of patent examination speed in strategic entrepreneurship.
With more business leaders than ever before embracing stakeholder capitalism – or the belief that companies should work to benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders – myriad questions have arisen about the concept’s viability and potential for impact. The Kenan Institute has been working to respond, and today we are excited to launch a new series exploring the most pressing issues surrounding stakeholder capitalism. Kicking off the series is this week’s Kenan Insight, which takes a deeper dive into the buzzed-about world of ESG investing. We hope you’ll check it out, and look forward to engaging with you on this topic and others throughout the series!
The current narrative around the U.S. labor market is a mixed bag, with unemployment numbers well above pre-pandemic rates while many companies struggle to fill jobs. In this Kenan Insight Q&A, three experts weigh in on the critical issues behind this dichotomy.
Out of the rubble of World War II, we collectively and deliberately built an institutional order that established norms of acceptable behavior and placed constraints on powerful nations. While work remains to create broader economic opportunity and some regions have suffered terrible conflict, the economic and financial globalization that this order fostered nevertheless yielded the greatest period of peace and economic prosperity that humanity has ever known. The more than 70 years since the war’s conclusion are, however, very atypical, and we are now returning to a setting far more familiar to any student of history, where strength and power supersede norms and rules. The world is characterized by a renewed struggle between illiberal autocracy and liberal democracy.
The authors provide an overview of the main accomplishments of private equity since the emergence of leveraged buyouts in the 1980s, and of the challenges now facing the industry—challenges that have been encountered before during three major growth waves and two full boom-and-bust cycles.
This study uses passage of the Dodd-Frank Act as a setting to examine whether changes in legal liability exposure faced by credit rating agencies affect the number of financial statement information signals required before rating changes. For upgrades, we predict and find that the greater legal exposure after the Act incentivized rating agencies to require more information signals, i.e., a greater number of prior quarters in which upgrades were implied by financial statement information.
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.
We study the effect of government-subsidized childcare on women's career outcomes and firm performance using linked tax filing data. Exploiting a universal childcare reform in Quebec in 1997 and the variation in its timing relative to childbirth across cohorts of parents, we show that earlier access to childcare increases employment among new mothers, particularly among those previously unemployed.
High levels of inflation have dominated global headlines for a good part of the last year, but what’s the connection between high global inflation and a strong dollar?
As President Xi Jinping officially begins his third term leading China, his ideological approach will be tested by instability - both within and outside his country.
UNC Kenan-Flagler Energy Center Director Stephen Arbogast discusses the power of carbon taxes to accomplish several goals for energy producers and consumers alike.
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.
Professor Denis Simon, who recently joined the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School faculty, will provide expert commentary about the ups and downs of business and technology relations between the U.S. and China.
Our 2023 Frontiers of Business Conference will convene corporate executives, top researchers and policy leaders to share objective, evidence-based solutions for navigating the precarious road toward a labor market equilibrium. Learn more today.
Chief Economist Gerald Cohen outlines three possible paths for the U.S. economy in coming months, as well as the indicators to keep an eye on.
UNC Tax Center Research Director Jeff Hoopes discusses how the tax system figures into the debt ceiling standoff and why we probably won’t see any dramatic increases in taxes anytime soon.
This study examines the spillover effect of environmental enforcement through private lending networks. Financial lending institutions face growing public and regulatory pressures to manage and reduce environmental risks relating to their lending activities and therefore are motivated to monitor corporate borrowers’ environmental practices.
The American Growth Project explains why manufacturing remains essential for economic growth and how manufacturing in the U.S. today incorporates both regional shifts and “stickiness” in traditional strongholds.