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

January 04, 2021

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?

December 01, 2020

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

November 02, 2020

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

Advisory Board

Greg Brown

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

Keith Crouch

Associate Director, Product Management, Burgiss

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

Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne, Faculty of Business and Economics

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

Professor of Finance, University of St.Gallen

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