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,...

We present conclusive evidence on the performance of private equity, using a high quality dataset of fund cash flows that covers about 85 percent of capital ever raised by U.S. buyout funds. For almost all vintage years since 1980, U.S. buyout funds have significantly outperformed the S&P 500....

This study considers the trade-off between better top management team (TMT) decision-making involving complementary perspectives and inefficiencies due to conflicts between individuals. In analyzing characteristics of 1,071 fund partners involved in 1,295 buyout deals by 117 funds, we find that...

We document that defined benefit pension plans with significant holdings in private equity (PE) earn substantially greater returns than plans with small holdings in both the 1990s and the 2000s. A one standard deviation increase in PE holdings is associated with 4% greater returns per year. Up...

Our study shows that the ownership of private equity funds influences the investments' performances. Our analysis focuses on the universe of PE investments, made by Italian closed-end funds, from 1999 to 2005. We find that bank-owned funds are able to carry into effect a weaker monitoring of the...

This study demonstrates that the ownership of private equity (PE) funds influences investment performance. The analysis focuses on the universe of PE investments made by Italian closed-end funds from 1999 to 2005. We find that bank-owned funds generally engage in weaker monitoring of the firms...

This paper examines diversification as a source of value creation and destruction in private equity (PE) funds. Previous literature has focused on the ‘diversification discount' in corporations. However, in PE funds, diversification might increase returns by ameliorating managerial risk...

This is the first empirical paper investigating a comprehensive sample of listed (i.e. publicly traded) private equity companies, covering 287 companies in the time period 1986 to 2003. After imposing liquidity constraints, and after correcting for non-surviving vehicles, we get a sample of 114...

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...

Portfolio optimization with private equity is based on one of three different indices: listed private equity indices, transaction-based private equity indices, and appraisal value based private equity indices. We show that none of these indices are appropriate for portfolio optimization. We...