Research

Our Research Strategy

At IPC, data, research and education improve understanding of the role of private capital in the global economy. An essential first step for generating quality research is access to reliable data.  Thus, our top priority is making research-quality data sources widely available to academic researchers.

Access to data on private investments presents challenges, including confidentiality concerns, the proprietary nature of many datasets, and the diffuse nature of private investments.  However, we believe that these challenges are best addressed by a deliberate systematic approach through a combined academic effort.  In many cases, data owners welcome the benefits derived from confidential analysis of their data by objective academic researchers.

IPC currently focuses on three research areas:

Private Equity Real Estate Active Management


What Do We Know About Institutional-Quality Hedge Funds?

February 06, 2024

Using publicly available sources such as trade press and Form ADV filings, we compile a list of 561 “institutional-quality” hedge fund managers that each have at least 1 billion USD in primary hedge fund assets under management. We examine the availability of historical return information for funds operated by these managers and find 152 managers (27.1%) are not represented in commercial databases.

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Loss Avoidance in Private Equity

February 01, 2024

Private equity investors rely on reported fund performance to make informed investment decisions. This paper provides evidence that buyout funds manage multiples of invested capital (MOICs) for portfolio companies to avoid incurring and reporting capital losses. In the distribution of deal-level MOICs, we document an

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Is the U.S. IPO Market About to Thaw? IPC Research Notes

January 04, 2024

The U.S. IPO market is in the midst of an unusually long cold spell. Investors are concerned about how the IPO market, and more broadly the market for private equity exits, has affected distributions to their portfolios. This has led us to wonder how the current episode compares to historical IPO activity and if recent signs (e.g., the recent filing by Shein) suggest the market is thawing. More

Do Investors Overvalue Startups? Evidence from the Junior Stakes of Mutual Funds

November 17, 2023

Best Paper of PERC 2023 - We show that mutual funds report their junior stakes in startups at 43% higher valuation than model fair values that consider multi-tier capital structures of startups. The latest-issued and most senior security is worth 48% more per share than junior securities held by mutual funds, implying that mutual funds mark junior securities close to par with the senior securities. More

The Better Angels of our Nature?

November 17, 2023

This paper studies the investment behavior of angel investors in private and public markets. Their angel investment returns in innovative firms are highly skewed and exhibit pronounced performance persistence that is unlikely to be driven by contemporaneous exposure to economy-wide shocks. Investor fixed effects absorb approximately 45%of the total variation in returns, indicating that accounting for persistent individual differences is critical for understanding this market.

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Unpacking Private Equity Performance

September 26, 2023
White Paper

Performance analysis of private equity funds is challenging because fund ownership does not trade in a liquid market with observable prices. Instead performance analysis, especially during a funds life, must rely on observed cash flows to and from the fund and quarterly net asset value (NAV) estimates. Further complicating the analysis are the increasingly common practices of funds using subscription lines of credit (fund-level debt) and recycling capital. More

Selling Private Equity Fees

June 23, 2023

We examine the sale of General Partner (GP) cash flow claims by Private Equity (PE) firms, termed GP stakes, and how these sales relate to agency frictions with fund investors. PE firms with better fundraising and performance records tend to sell GP stakes, mostly to other PE firms. More

Diverse Hedge Funds

April 25, 2023

Hedge fund teams with heterogeneous educational backgrounds, academic specializations, work experiences, genders, and races, outperform homogeneous teams after adjusting for risk and fund characteristics. An event study of manager team transitions, instrumental variable regressions, and an analysis of managers that simultaneously operate solo- and team-managed funds address endogeneity concerns. More

Mapping the ESG Landscape in the Lower Middle Market: Evidence from a Survey of SBIA Members

March 31, 2023

This survey was designed to provide a meaningful reference point for the benefits and challenges to ESG adoptions, and especially to highlight those issues that are unique to small-business investors. More

ESG for Institutional Portfolios

March 30, 2023
White Paper

This white paper examines Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues in the context of institutional portfolios that include alternative investments, such as private equity, hedge funds, and real assets. The goal of the paper is to provide a framework for understanding issues related to ESG investing through an objective lens grounded in theoretical and empirical economic analysis. More