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.
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Private Equity: Accomplishments and Challenges

Since the 1980s, there has been an ongoing discussion about the role of private equity (PE) in the economy. As investors have flocked to the asset class, voices critical of the negative social impact of PE have grown louder. In this article, we examine what is known from the academic literature about the effects of private equity on corporate productivity, the returns for investors, and possible broader economic and social consequences.
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Buy Low, Sell High? Do Private Equity Fund Managers Have Market Timing Abilities?

In this paper we focus on whether PE fund managers are able to use their discretion over timing to create returns for investors – in other words, whether they have market timing ability.
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Adverse Selection and the Performance of Private Equity Co-Investments

In this paper we use a large sample of buyout and venture capital coinvestments to test how such deals compare with the remaining fund investments.
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Winning a Deal in Private Equity: Do Educational Networks Matter?

In this paper, we explore the importance of one potential source of competitive advantage – educational networks – in both identifying and winning deals.
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Can Investors Time Their Exposure to Private Equity?

Private equity markets are highly cyclical. The aggregate amount of capital committed to the sector varies substantially from peak to trough, and many have observed that periods of high fundraising activity are followed by periods of low absolute performance for the asset class (see Harris, Jenkinson, and Kaplan, among others). This raises an important question: is it possible to market-time the allocations to private equity to avoid the cyclicality of performance?
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