Founder and Research Director, Institute for Private Capital; Van and Kay Weatherspoon Distinguished Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School; Faculty Director, Luther Hodges Scholars
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.
Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland sees the growth in startups and remote work as especially benefiting the South and the areas around urban downtowns.
Kenan Institute Chief Economist Gerald Cohen explains why we're doubling down on our recessionary forecasts.
Building resiliency is essential for managing today's distinct risks, yet how do businesses develop the agility and adaptability that would make them more resilient? That's the focus of the 2024 Kenan Institute Grand Challenge.
Over the last two decades, public and private equity markets have changed dramatically. For instance, the total number of publicly listed firms decreased from more than 7500 in 1997 to approximately 3500 in 2018. This precipitous decline can be attributed to a corresponding sharp drop in the number of IPOs.
Many providers of defined-contribution investment plans, such as 401(k) plans, have advocated for broader access to private investments. In this Kenan Insight, we examine the operating, regulatory and legal constraints involved in allowing that access, and explore what, if anything, retail investors are likely to gain from investing in private funds.
When high-tech companies plan to expand, U.S. cities often compete to attract their investment. While living near a new corporate neighbor can bring job creation and an economic boost, these benefits aren’t experienced equally by local inhabitants. This week's insight explores this and other key findings in new research by UNC Kenan-Flagler Professor Franklin Qian and economist Rose Tan.
Reactions from Wall Street and Main Street to how a company addresses – or doesn’t address – issues of gender inequality and sexual harassment affect social media sentiment, brand equity and market value, new research shows.
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.
Despite strong economic indicators—2.5% GDP growth, unemployment under 4%, and easing inflation—American consumer sentiment remains low. Kenan Institute experts explore why the public's mood doesn’t match the upbeat data, highlighting deeper sources of economic unease.
Academics and business leaders shared a panel at our recent Frontiers conference, showing how each can offer insights to help one another develop a broader, shared understanding of changes in the labor market.
UNC Professor Mohammad Jarrahi and IBM’s Phaedra Boinodiris address concerns about organizational adoption of artificial intelligence and how to include employees in important discussions, such as ethical considerations and potential job-related changes.
For small businesses, AI promises to handle financial and operational tasks, freeing up workers for other duties and creating new efficiencies. We offer seven focal points for small businesses planning for AI integration.
We develop a multi-period theoretical model to characterize the relationship between a publication that ranks universities and prospective attendees -- high school students -- who might view the ranking and use it to help decide which university to attend.
Google Scholar tells us that, over a quarter of a million studies examine the relationship between CEO compensation and firm performance. Aguinis et al. (2018) take much of that work to task. Observing that the distribution of CEO compensation is skewed, they question any work that assumes a normal distribution. Correcting the flaw, Aguinis et al. (2018) conduct their own investigation of this important relationship. Contrary to previous work, they find no consistent empirical relationship between pay and performance. The authors review and discuss their work with a clear eye on its implications for improving our understanding of these relationships.
While previous research has investigated various drivers of electronic word of mouth (eWOM), the firm's offline competitive environment has not been considered. The authors explore this new horizon and examine the different effects of firms’ geographic concentration, or agglomeration, on the volume of eWOM received. They distinguish three types of agglomeration—density agglomeration (number of firms in the industry in an area), product agglomeration (overlap in product types offered by the firms in the area), and temporal agglomeration (overlap in moment of consumption).
Three-tiered private-label (PL) portfolio strategies (low-quality tier: economy PLs, mid-quality tier: standard PLs, and top-quality tier: premium PLs) are gaining interest around the world. Drawing on the context-effects literature, the authors postulate how the introduction of economy and premium PLs may affect the choice of mainstream-quality and premium-quality national brands (NBs) and the choice of the retailer's existing PL offering.
Although the power held by the marketing department can determine key organizational outcomes, including firm performance, this power seemingly has been decreasing. To address this apparent disconnect, the authors propose that the board of directors is a critical but overlooked antecedent of marketing department power (MDP).
Save the date for the Fall 2023 NCGrowth Showcase in Bertie County, NC! Don't miss out on engaging presentations and lunch, Nov 30th, 2023, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.