Using a large sample of institutional investors' private equity investments in venture and buyout funds, we estimate the extent to which investors' skill affects returns from private equity investments. We first consider whether investors have differential skill by comparing the distribution of...

We show, using machine learning, that fund characteristics can consistently differentiate high from low-performing mutual funds, as well as identify funds with net-of-fees abnormal returns. Fund momentum and fund flow are the most important predictors of future risk-adjusted fund performance,...

Local daily newspapers historically played an important role in U.S. democracy by providing citizens with information about local policy issues. In recent decades, local newspapers have struggled to compete with new online platforms. In the first study of private equity (PE) in a struggling...

The U.S. entrepreneurial finance market has changed dramatically over the last two decades. Entrepreneurs raising their first round of venture capital retain 30% more equity in their firm and are more likely to control their board of directors. Late-stage startups are raising larger amounts of...

This paper measures the risk-adjusted performance of US buyouts. It draws on a unique and proprietary set of data on 133 US buyouts between 1984 and 2004. For each of them we determine a public market equivalent that matches it with respect to its timing and its systematic risk. After a...

This paper investigates the role of private equity (PE) in failed bank resolutions after the 2008 financial crisis, using proprietary FDIC failed bank acquisition data. PE investors made substantial investments in underperforming and riskier failed banks, particularly in geographies where local...

Most research on the CEO labor market studies public company CEOs while largely ignoring CEOs in private equity (PE) funded companies. We fill this gap by studying the market for CEOs among U.S. companies purchased by PE firms in large leveraged buyout transactions. 71% of those companies hired...

Private equity (PE) plays an increasingly important role in the modern US economy. However, its impacts on owned-firms are incompletely understood. We exploit a historically large leveraged buyout of a national hospital chain to examine how the full life cycle of PE influences hospital-level...

Despite the incentives of incumbent domestic listed corporations (DLCs) in the electricity generation industry, private equity, institutional investors, and foreign corporations have played an outsized role in financing the energy transition. These new entrants are twice as likely to create...

We study how investment fees vary within private-capital funds. Net-of-fee return clustering suggests that most funds have two tiers of fees, and we decompose differences across tiers into both management and performance-based fees. Managers of venture capital funds and those in high demand are...