Limited partners (LPs) of private equity funds commit to invest with extreme levels of illiquidity and significant uncertainty regarding the timing of capital flows. Secondary markets have emerged which alleviate some of the associated cost. This paper develops a subjective valuation model...

This paper uses proprietary data from a leading intermediary to understand the magnitude and determinants of transaction costs in the secondary market for private equity stakes. Most transactions occur at a discount to net asset value. Buyers average an annualized public market equivalent of...

Quantitative research analysts (Quants) produce in-depth quantitative and econometric modeling of market anomalies to assist sell-side analysts and institutional clients with stock selection strategies. Quants are associated with more efficient analyst forecasting behavior on anomaly predictors...

This paper introduces a novel methodology to estimate abnormal performance and systematic risk of private equity from observable cash flows. The methodology is validated using Monte-Carlo simulations and is applied to a unique sample of 10,798 portfolio company investments by private equity...

When a private equity firm raises a larger fund, performance tends to decline. This pattern is usually interpreted as evidence of decreasing returns. I propose a more innocuous explanation: high-growth private equity firms were on average lucky in the past and therefore are expected to...

Using a sample of 3,977 individual buyout managers with more than 10,330 deal involvements in 5,030 unique buyout transactions we investigate individual manager performance and its persistence. We find evidence for deal-level gross PME performance persistence at this level of analysis. In...

We examine the performance of 2,790 private equity (PE) funds incepted during 1979-2008 using Stochastic Discount Factors (SDFs) implied by the two leading consumption-based asset pricing models (CBAPMs) — external habit and long-run risks — as their assumptions appear consistent with...

Using real estate investment trusts as a unique laboratory, we investigate the impact of investor sentiment on seasoned equity offering (SEO) price dynamics. Evidence indicates that investor sentiment is positively related to pre-SEO overpricing and probability of issuance. SEOs issued in high...

This paper uses highly detailed administrative records from the Norwegian Tax Authority to provide direct measures of the returns from investing in newly established, innovative companies. We trace out the entire funding and pricing histories of each firm and study performance measures at the...

This paper investigates the systematic role of limits to arbitrage in the risk and return profile of hedge funds. We follow He et al. (2017) and define these frictions in financial markets as the shocks to the equity capital ratio of primary dealer counterparties of the New York Federal Reserve....