This descriptive paper analyzes the performance of the private equity secondaries market during the financial crisis 2008-2009, in order to understand the effective liquidity of private equity investments during this episode of market stress. We document that the secondaries market followed the...

We study the role and performance of private equity (PE) in corporate asset sales. Corporate sellers obtain significantly positive excess returns in PE deals, gains in wealth significantly greater than for intercorporate asset sales. Based on exit valuations for 98% of PE deals, we find gains in...

This paper explores whether private equity firms that are new to the industry take excessive risks relative to funds from established firms. We use differences between the implicit incentives of managers of experienced and of novice funds as identification strategy. We find that novice funds...

The fastest growing segment of private equity deals are secondary buyouts - sales from one PE fund to another. Using a comprehensive sample of leveraged buyouts we investigate whether SBOs are value-maximizing, or reflect opportunistic behavior. To proxy for adverse incentives, we develop buy...