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...

The paper develops a novel econometric approach to estimate abnormal returns and systematic risk of private equity investments from observable investment cash flows. A unique feature of the method is that it gives closed-form estimators for systematic risk and abnormal returns. In addition,...

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...

We analyze short-duration equity investments using traded claims on index dividends. We show that investment strategies with constant short maturity outperform a systematic long position in the underlying equity index on a risk-adjusted basis and in absolute terms. Furthermore, we find higher...

Risk models commonly used in practice disregard the diversifiable risk of LP's PE portfolios. Based on a unique data set we find evidence that the relevance of idiosyncratic portfolio risk might be underrated. Our simulation results show that diversification across the number deals significantly...

The standard approach to measuring portfolio risk - regressing portfolio returns on market returns - seriously understates the risk of venture capital, buyouts (private equity), real estate, and other alternative assets not traded in active markets. Institutional investors, having a sense of the...

In this paper we propose an integrated approach to assessing risk for alternative investment funds, both at micro and macro (market) level. Building upon the experience and practice in European Supervisory Agencies and different National Competent Authorities on assessing risk for other type of...

For years, research has been conducted to correctly model and predict the risk and return structures of Private Equity (PE) funds. Although past research has revealed valuable insight into the features of those funds, most risk and return model struggle with the dispersion of PE funds' returns,...