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...

Using a large sample of institutional investors' investments in private equity funds raised between 1991 and 2011, we estimate the extent to which investors' skill affects their returns. Bootstrap analyses show that the variance of actual performance is higher than would be expected by chance,...

Private equity funds hold assets that are hard to value. Managers may have an incentive to distort reported valuations if these are used by investors to decide on commitments to subsequent funds managed by the same firm. Using a large dataset of buyout and venture funds, we test for the presence...

Despite an increasing importance of secondary buyouts in the private equity market, little is known about the perspective of the seller and his motives for choosing this exit type. Do private equity firms have a clear pecking order regarding the exit channels for their portfolio companies? Is a...

We develop a new method to estimate private equity funds' market beta from cash flows. Our methodology extends the widely known public market equivalent calculation to a cross-sectional regression. By simply regressing funds' internal rates of return on their paired market internal rates of...

We evaluate the performance of limited partners' (LPs) private equity investments over time. Using a sample of 14,380 investments by 1,852 LPs in 1,250 buyout and venture funds started between 1991 and 2006, we find that the superior performance of endowment investors in the 1991-1998 period,...

Private equity has traditionally been thought to provide diversi cation bene ts. However, these benefi ts may be lower than anticipated. We find that private equity suffers from signifi cant exposure to the same liquidity risk factor as public equity and other alternative asset classes. The...

Research on IPOs commonly focuses on the relation between firms' pre IPO ownership structure and subsequent stock performance. We extend the literature by additionally focusing on companies' post IPO ownership structure, in particular private equity capital engagement, to analyze IPOs stock...

Private equity has traditionally been thought to provide diversification benefits However, these benefits may be lower than anticipated. We find that private equity suffers from significant exposure to the same liquidity risk factor as public equity and other alternative asset classes. The...

Owners of private companies are often highly underdiversified which exposes them to idiosyncratic risk. We investigate the consequences of underdiversification at the company level. Information on US companies and their owners is obtained from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Survey of...