We review the theory and evidence on venture capital (VC) and other private equity: why professional private equity exists, what private equity managers do with their portfolio companies, what returns they earn, who earns more and why, what determines the design of contracts signed between (i)...

This article reviews empirical methods to assess risk and return in private equity. I discuss data and econometric issues for deal-level, fund-level, and publicly traded partnerships data. Risk-adjusted return estimates vary substantially by method, time period, and data source. The weight of...

Private equity is still a relatively young asset class, with some unique characteristics. One feature is the very irregular timing of cash flows, and a consequence of this is that private equity relies on measures of returns that are not standard in other asset classes. As such, new investors...

This paper analyses the fundamental drivers of risk and return in portfolios of private equity fund investments. We draw on a large data set of 771 mature European and North American primary buyout funds with historic performance information from Preqin covering vintages from 1998-2007. Using...

Private Equity (PE) has grown into a substantial asset class, but there remain major problems with measuring PE fund returns. Investors continue to use the internal rate of return (IRR) as a key measure of fund performance. It is well known that early returns of cash can have a substantial...

For alternative assets such as venture capital, buyouts (private equity), real estate, etc., the standard regression of portfolio returns on market returns to measure risk produces risk measures that are not credible. Institutional investors, doubting such measures, instead often use either some...

Uncertainty about manager skill and diversification constraints are hallmarks of investing in alternative assets. This paper quantifies the utility losses to private equity investors arising from these frictions. When calibrated to the data on institutional allocations to private equity and...

In this paper, we find evidence of reversals in relative exit performance between the "short" and "long-run" in the VC market, with the short-run defined to be the first five years of business, and the long-run, the sixth year of business onwards. Using proxies for the risk of venture capital...

Limited partners allocate capital into venture capital funds with the expectation of a risk-return profile matching the fund’s investment style in terms of startup investment stage, location, and industry. This paper draws a connection between style drifts in these three dimensions and the...

This paper presents an equilibrium model in a pure exchange economy when investors have three possible sources of heterogeneity. Investors may differ in their beliefs, in their level of risk aversion and in their time preference rate. We study the impact of investors heterogeneity on the...