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 9,000 funds, 6.5 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
Debt and Leverage in Private Equity: A Survey of Existing Results and New Findings
This paper examines leverage and debt financing in the private equity buyout market. We provide an overview of how debt is utilized in buyout investment structures and a review of existing theoretical and empirical academic literature. The analysis also includes results from new data sources with information on deal structure and performance since the global financial crisis (GFC). We document that leverage ratios (Net Debt / EBITDA) have increased substantially in recent years and the increase is even more pronounced after unwinding EBITDA “adjustments” which have become increasingly large. More
Should defined contribution plans include private equity investments?
Investors want access to the best performing assets for their portfolios. Driven by the strong performance of private investment funds in recent decades, many providers of defined-contribution (DC) investment services have advocated for broader access to private investments in these plans, such as 401(k)s. More
Has Persistence Persisted in Private Equity? Evidence from Buyout and Venture Capital Funds
We present new evidence on the persistence of U.S. private equity (buyout and venture capital) funds using cash-flow data sourced from Burgiss’s large sample of institutional investors. Previous research, studying largely pre-2000 data, finds strong persistence for both buyout and venture capital (VC) firms. Using ex post or most recent fund performance (as of June 2019), we confirm the previous findings on persistence overall as well as for pre-2001 and post-2000 funds. More