General Partners (GPs) in private equity face a trade-off between focusing their skills and effort on fewer investments to earn higher returns, or investing more broadly to reduce risk through diversification. Using a novel, deal-level dataset of 5,925 global investments from 1999 to 2016, we...

We use a proprietary database of private equity returns to measure the excess return of private equity over public equity and to partition it into two components: an asset class alpha and compensation for illiquidity. Our evidence suggests that private equity managers, as a group, generate alpha...

We evaluate the performance of limited partners' (LPs) private equity investments over time. Using a sample of 14,380 investments by 1,852 LPs in 1,250 buyout and venture funds started between 1991 and 2006, we find that the superior performance of endowment investors in the 1991-1998 period,...

A striking feature of private equity (PE) is that performance is persistent, with many PE firms consistently producing high (or low) returns net of fees. We use a new variance decomposition model to isolate three components of performance persistence. We find a large amount of long-term...

Kathryn Judge of Columbia University documents how financial intermediaries persistently impose high fees compared to the value rendered, attributes this to political influence, and suggests countervailing policy strategies, including stoking competition and enhancing disclosure to reduce...

This survey reviews the growing body of academic work on venture capital. It lays out the major data sources used. It examines the work on venture capital investments in companies, looking at issues of selection, contracting, post-investment services, and exits. The survey considers recent work...