Latest Research
ESG for Institutional Portfolios
March 30, 2023This 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. We also examine ESG as an expression of the broader concept of stakeholder capitalism. 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
Selecting Private Equity Funds Using Machine Learning
November 04, 2022Prospective investors in Private Equity (PE) funds receive a large amount of non-standardized and qualitative information about fund manager investment strategies. Using a novel and proprietary sample of 380 Private Placement Memoranda, we combine for the first time Natural Language Processing techniques and Machine Learning algorithms to forecast PE fund success based on investment approach descriptions. More
Are Lower Fees Better? Changing the Management Fee Basis in Private Equity
October 27, 2022Does reducing management fees to private equity fund managers preclude investors from hiring skilled managers and induce agency problems? I study a popular management fee contract that reduces management fees by paying a percentage of capital invested into the fund's unrealized projects. More
Recent News & Media
2022 PERC Symposium Best Paper Award
November 29, 2022This year’s award goes to Minmo Gahng and Blake Jackson (University of Florida, Warrington College of Business) for their paper Selling Private Equity Fees. Their paper examines private equity (PE) firms’ minority stake sales and the impact of these sales on agency frictions with fund investors. More