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 MSCI to provide access to data for academic research. The MSCI-Burgiss data available for use by PERC researchers contains over 15,000 funds and about 320,000 underlying investment holdings. It is sourced directly from limited partners and contains full performance histories of cash flows at the fund level. The MSCI-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 MSCI-Burgiss private equity fund data.
Greg Brown
Research Director, IPC; Weatherspoon Distinguished Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Keith Crouch
Executive Director, Co-Head Private Capital Product, MSCI
Robert S. Harris
C. Stewart Sheppard Professor of Business Administration, University of Virginia, Darden School; (PERC Advisory Board Chair)
Yael Hochberg
Ralph S. O’Connor Professor in Entrepreneurship & Finance, Head of the Entrepreneurship Initiative, Rice University
Tim Jenkinson
Professor of Finance, Oxford University, Saïd 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
We document a new pattern in nonbank lending: business development companies (BDCs) extend substantial credit commitments to borrowers, with commitment-to-asset ratios comparable to those of banks.
This paper examines political connections as barriers to entry in financial intermediation. Exploiting an unanticipated weakening of political ties between private equity firms and state and local officials, we find that public pension funds reallocate capital toward first-time private equity funds.
This paper provides the first systematic evidence on secondary markets for equity in VC backed startups, a fast-growing segment of private capital markets.
We summarize key findings from IPC’s annual white paper on buyout fund exits and distributions. Specifically, we develop models using aggregated, fund-level, and deal-level data to better understand the historical determinants of distributions.
Politicians, investors, and investment managers have begun advocating for the expansion of retail investor access to private markets, despite uncertain implications for individual financial opportunities and outcomes.
This study provides the first large-scale analysis of face-based impression factors in venture capital.
Continuation funds (CFs) are a recent financial innovation in which PE managers raise new funds to purchase assets from their existing funds. CFs have surged in popularity, accounting for 9% of PE exits in 2024 and raising twice as much as US IPOs.
We develop a theoretical framework that formalizes the conflicts of interest arising in continuation vehicles (CVs), in which general partners (GPs) transfer portfolio companies from an existing fund to a new vehicle they continue to manage.
We assemble the first comprehensive sample of venture fraud cases involving 614 U.S. venture capital (VC)-backed startups founded since 2000. We find that VC-backed firms are 54% more likely to face fraud charges than comparable non-VC backed firms
This paper examines how industry concentration evolves through changes in corporate ownership, with a focus on private equity.
Using proprietary data on U.S. venture capital (VC) fund distributions, I document that at least 56% of capital is returned to limited partners (LPs) in kind as publicly listed equity rather than cash.
We study how subjective beliefs shape the portfolio allocations of institutional investors, and find that pension fund allocations are significantly linked to belief-implied mean-variance efficient allocations across pension funds, across asset classes, and over time.