Private Equity

Private Equity Research Consortium (PERC) is an assemblage of academic researchers and industry professionals dedicated to advancing research on private equity and credit. Our core mission is to develop a better understanding of how private capital investments affect both financial results and broader economic outcomes.

PERC, organized through IPC, was established in 2012 by scholars from the business schools at The University of Chicago, Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Oxford, and The University of Virginia as well as other institutions who recognized challenges facing empirical research on private equity. PERC supports academic studies by researchers all over the world by facilitating access to data for scholars. For example, PERC has an exclusive arrangement with Burgiss to provide access to data for academic research. The Burgiss dataset includes 7,000 funds with over $5.5 trillion in assets. It is sourced directly from limited partners and contains full performance histories of cash flows at the fund level. The Burgiss dataset represents the largest and most in-depth dataset of its kind on venture, buyout, and real estate funds available for academic research.

PERC periodically accepts applications from academic researchers for access to Burgiss private equity fund data.

Latest Private Equity Research

Have Private Equity Returns Really Declined?

May 06, 2019

White Paper

In a recent paper, “Demystifying Illiquid Assets – Expected Returns for Private Equity,” Ilmanen, Chandra and McQuinn (of AQR) give a perspective on the past, present, and expected future performance of private equity. They conclude that “private equity does not seem to offer as attractive a net-of-fee return edge over public market counterparts as it did 15-20 years ago from either a historical or forward-looking perspective.” This analysis provides our perspective based on more recent and, we think, more reliable data and performance measures – the historical perspective is more positive than Ilmanen et al. portray. More

Venture Capital Contracts

November 01, 2018

Working Paper

We develop a dynamic search and matching model to estimate the impact of venture capital (VC) contract terms on start-up outcomes, and the split of value between entrepreneur and investor, in the presence of endogenous selection. Using a new, large data set of rst nancing rounds of start-up companies, we find an internally optimal equity split between VC and entrepreneur that maximizes the probability of success, consistent with standard double moral hazard theories. However, in virtually all deals, VCs use their bargaining power to receive more equity than is value-maximizing for the start-up. In most cases, participation rights and investor board representation reduce company value, while shifting more value to the investors. More

Can Investors Time Their Exposure to Private Equity?

August 28, 2018

Working Paper

We find modest gains, at best, to pursuing more realistic, investable strategies that time capital commitments to private equity. There is a high degree of time-series correlation in net cash flows even across commitment strategies that allocate capital in a very different manner over time. More

Advisory Board

James Bachman

Director, Burgiss

Greg Brown

Research Director, IPC; Professor of Finance, Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Scholar, University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School

Robert S. Harris

PERC Director, C. Stewart Sheppard Professor of Business Administration, University of Virginia, Darden School

Tim Jenkinson

Professor of Finance, Oxford University, Said Business School

Steven Kaplan

Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

David Robinson

Professor of Finance and J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Professor of International Management, Duke University, Fuqua School of Business

Reiner Braun

Chair, Entrepreneurial Finance 2, Technische Universität München

Nick Crain

Assistant Professor of Finance, Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Management

Michael Ewens

Assoc. Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship, California Institute of Technology

Will Gornall

Assistant Professor of Finance, University of British Columbiam, Sauder School of Business

Oleg Gredil

Assistant Professor of Finance, Tulane University, A. B. Freeman School of Business

Yael Hochberg

Ralph S. O'Connor Professor in Entrepreneurship (Finance); Head, Rice University Entrepreneurship Initiative

Victoria Ivashina

Lovett-Learned Chaired Professor of Finance, Harvard Business School

Arthur Korteweg

Dean's Associate Professor in Business Administration, Associate Professor of Finance and Business Economics, University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business

Josh Lerner

Schiff Professor of Investment Banking, Harvard Business School

Stefan Morkoetter

Managing Director & Assistant Professor, St.Gallen Institute of Management

Adair Morse

Associate Professor of Finance, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business

Ludovic Phalippou

Associate Professor of Finance, University of Oxford, Saïd Business School

Antoinette Schoar

Koerner Professor of Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management

Berk Sensoy

Hans Stoll Professor of Finance, Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Management

Morten Sorensen

Head of Finance Department, Copenhagen Business School; Adjunct Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School

Ilya Strebulaev

The David S. Lobel Professor of Private Equity; Professor of Finance; Director, Stanford Venture Capital Initiative, Graduate School of Stanford Business

Per Stromberg

SSE Centennial Professor of Finance and Private Equity, Stockholm School of Economics; Adjunct Professor of Finance, Booth Business School, University of Chicago

Michael Weisbach

Ralph W. Kurtz Chair in Finance, Ohio State University, Fisher College of Business

Ayako Yasuda

Professor of Finance, UC Davis