We survey over 1,000 institutional and corporate venture capitalists (VCs) at more than 900 different firms to learn how their decisions and investments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare their survey answers to those provided by a large sample of VCs in early 2016 and...

We develop a valuation model for venture capital-backed companies and apply it to 135 U.S. unicorns - private companies with reported valuations above $1 billion. We value unicorns using financial terms from legal filings and find reported unicorn post-money valuation average 50% above fair...

We develop a model of the joint capital structure decisions of banks and their borrowers. Strikingly high bank leverage emerges naturally from the interplay between two sets of forces. First, seniority and diversification reduce bank asset volatility by an order of magnitude relative to that of...

We survey 79 private equity investors with combined AUM of over $750B about their practices in firm valuation, capital structure, governance, and value creation. Investors rely primarily on IRR and multiples to evaluate investments. Their LPs focus more on absolute performance. Capital structure...

Most research on the CEO labor market studies public company CEOs while largely ignoring CEOs in private equity (PE) funded companies. We fill this gap by studying the market for CEOs among U.S. companies purchased by PE firms in large leveraged buyout transactions. 71% of those companies hired...