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.
We study the risk and return properties of private real estate, infrastructure, and natural resources funds using a large dataset on private real assets.
Private equity fund general partners (GPs) strategically adjust their investment strategies in response to early returns. Funds experiencing higher early returns in the fund life cycle subsequently shift away from riskier investments
Why do some fund managers outperform others? I construct a novel dataset to study this question in private equity (PE), tracking the careers and deals of PE professionals who have deployed 97% of capital for U.S. PE firms over the past three decades.
Non-bank lending to small-and medium-sized firms-i.e., private credit-has exploded over the past two decades. To explore the rise in its popularity, we focus on Business Development Companies...
This paper examines how banks’ financing of nonbank lenders affects monetary policy transmission. Using supervisory bank loan-level data and deal-level private credit data, we document an intermediation chain...
We replicate the analysis in Ennis and Rasmussen (2025a) using best practices in academic empirical finance and document some meaningfully different results. Specifically, we find no statistically reliable evidence of risk-adjusted underperformance of LPE.
The performance of private investments has historically been undertaken at the fund level. Recent advances in data collection and access have made it possible instead to analyze the performance of private investment deals.
A defining feature of startup financing is its staged structure: in each funding round, venture capital (VC) investors have the option to continue financing or to abandon a startup.
This update of IPC’s IPO model shows that the IPO Market has returned to normal (even if just barely). It’s a far cry from the “hot” market of 2021, but we see positive signs – if momentum continues in August, the IPO Market could finally sustain a more normal posture over the longer term.
Using comprehensive U.S. data from the SEC’s EDGAR database and Morningstar, we show that equity and fixed income interval funds hold, on average, 29% and 33% of highly illiquid assets, respectively, far exceeding the 15% limit for mutual funds and ETFs.
This study addresses the optimal asset allocation problem for investors managing a diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, and hedge funds. Significant allocations to hedge funds may be justified due to their diversification benefits, even when hedge funds generate minimal or no alpha.
This paper studies the relationship between the growth in private capital markets and the rise in economic inequalities in the U.S over the last two decades. First, we document that the share of financing raised by early-stage companies from U.S.-based high-net-worth individuals...