Commercial real estate (CRE) is real estate held to generate income or used as an input into production by firms. It is notably different from other asset classes of a similar magnitude in that CRE is traded in private, illiquid markets. CRE is a hugely important asset class that has received less attention from the academic literature than asset classes that rival CRE in terms of sheer value. Yet pension funds, life insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds and other institutional investors seek the diversification benefits provided by CRE’s unusually steady income flow. The paper, “Commercial Real Estate as an Asset Class,” by Andra Ghent of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, Walter Torous of the MIT Center for Real Estate and Rossen Valkanov of UCSD’s Rady School of Management provides a much-needed overview of the CRE literature thus far, focusing on its attributes as an asset class.
In honor of National Fintech Day on Tuesday, Aug. 20, Kenan Institute Senior Faculty Fellow and Rethinc. Labs Faculty Director Eric Ghysels gives an update on the state of fintech initiatives at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and more broadly, at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Overview The Kenan Institute’s MBA Kenan Scholars Program is the premier research opportunity for UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School MBA students. Scholars gain real-world research experience through a year-long apprenticeship. They...
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.
Attributing greater value to missing earnings estimates than to beating them signals a trend toward short-term demands and rewards. But what if a firm wishes to make costly investments that could yield long-term business resilience?
Reviewing 25 years of research, we observed that the science of feedback at work is not yet a story of coherent and cumulative progress. Feedback is often generically defined, and assumptions substantially diverge. Consequently, insights often appear disconnected from the way feedback is practiced and experienced in organizations. We organize the literature by making three core assumptions explicit and identifying six distinct substreams of feedback research.
My particular path has contained, as most paths do, twists and turns. As I look back, they all seem somehow related to each other, but they were not all planned. Design/methodology/approach I will discuss my life and career in chronological order, then reflect on my career and research philosophy. I will also discuss several of my most cited articles and how they emerged. Findings I emphasize research that is both academically rigorous and relevant to business. I also show that passion for a subject, even one that is risky and not encouraged by others, has resulted in lifelong interest and inspiration for me.
The case study "Electronic Financial-Advisor for Tech Savvy" (EFforTS, or Efforts) examines a Robo-Advisor start-up based in Raleigh, North Carolina, founded by tech-industry entrepreneurs. Efforts developed an algorithm-based online investment platform tailored for technology professionals, gaining attention through successful social media marketing.
We hypothesized that individuals in cultures typified by lower levels of relational mobility would tend to show more attention to the surrounding social and physical context (i.e., holistic vs. analytic thinking) compared with individuals in higher mobility cultural contexts. Six studies provided support for this idea. Studies 1a and 1b showed that differences in relational mobility in cultures as diverse as the U.S., Spain, Israel, Nigeria, and Morocco predicted patterns of dispositional bias as well as holistic (vs. analytic) attention.
The collapse of the securitization market during the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis resulted from investors’ concern with the value of securitized assets and securities issued by special purpose entities (SPEs). Research has shown that prior to the Crisis, investors valued equity of sponsor-originator banks (S-Os) as if there were an implicit guarantee extended to SPE creditors that would be fully honored. We predict that the Crisis caused investors to value S-O equity as if such guarantees would not be honored.
Taylor Guitars purchased an ebony mill in Cameroon to ensure corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) in sourcing, and shared the responsibly-sourced supply of ebony with competitors through horizontal sourcing. Inspired by this case, we investigate vertical integration as an alternative strategy for CSER in sourcing in which a firm can vertically integrate with its supplier in order to ensure responsible practices in the supply chain.
Scholars are increasingly recognizing that allyship affects allies themselves. Although existing scholarship covers a multitude of constructs, most of the literature focuses on social evaluations and their effects on allyship persistence. We posit that the dual focus on social evaluations and allyship persistence has limited the theoretical insights and applied relevance of scholarship on the consequences of allyship for allies.
The UNC Entrepreneurship Center will host its fourth and final fireside chat for the fall 2020 semester with Bill Spruill on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Fireside chats are a continuing series of talks hosted by Launch Chapel Hill and The Entrepreneurship Center. These conversations seek to showcase a broad range of entrepreneurs who are making an impact in their field, as well as introduce and connect these people to the Launch Chapel Hill and Triangle community.
Maryann Feldman, director of Kenan Institute affiliated center CREATE, spoke with Lili Török of the Endeavor Insight blog "Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Insights" about the role of entrepreneurship in economic development.
Governments often subsidize startups with the goal of spurring entrepreneurship using tax incentives. Exploiting the staggered implementation of angel investor tax credits in 31 U.S. states from 1988 to 2018, we find that these programs increase the number of angel investments and average investment size.
The 2021 report explores the following: Initially, we explore the state of startups, small businesses and investments after a year – and global pandemic – have passed. Then we dive into one of the hottest areas today: health innovation. We highlight trends related to COVID-19, as well as other relevant topics, such as how AI and machine learning are impacting innovations in health. After that deep dive, we zoom out to explore broader trends related to investment structures, the impact of economic recovery funds distributed by the government, and other capital formation specific to entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Recent research has documented that industry concentration has increased significantly over the past 25 years, with potentially negative consequences for competition, productivity, and social welfare. Some have suggested that greater corporate tax planning by industry leaders, which can provide them with a cost advantage over their competitors, has contributed to this trend. As a result, policymakers are targeting such tax planning to reduce industry concentration.
Hierarchies emerge as collectives attempt to organize themselves toward successful performance. Consequently, research has focused on how team hierarchies affect performance. We extend existing models of the hierarchy-performance relationship by adopting an alternative: Performance is not only an output of hierarchy but also a critical input, as teams’ hierarchical differentiation may vary based on whether they are succeeding.
Over the last two decades, executive compensation research has focused primarily on equity-based pay and incentives emanating from executives' firm-specific equity portfolios, while generally ignoring cash-based bonus plans as a second order effect. Exploiting access to new data sources, there has been a revival of interest by accounting researchers in more deeply understanding the value adding roles played by bonus plans.
We recently introduced a research program on how firms can effectively capture fleeting opportunities using heuristics. Heuristics, we advocate, are the essence of strategy, especially in unpredictable markets where opportunities are often numerous, fast moving, and uncertain. Our emphasis on heuristics invites comparison with prominent research programs in cognitive psychology. We address this opportunity by comparing our “simple rules” heuristics approach with “heuristics-and-biases” and “fast-and-frugal” heuristics research. Collectively, the three approaches offer a rich understanding of heuristics.