Skill and Luck in Private Equity Performance

69 Pages Posted: 3 Apr 2014 Last revised: 16 Dec 2015

See all articles by Arthur G. Korteweg

Arthur G. Korteweg

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business

Morten Sorensen

Dartmouth College - Tuck School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: October 29, 2015

Abstract

A striking feature of private equity (PE) is that performance is persistent, with many PE firms consistently producing high (or low) returns net of fees. We use a new variance decomposition model to isolate three components of performance persistence. We find a large amount of long-term persistence: the spread in expected net-of-fees future returns between top- and bottom-quartile PE firms is 7 to 8 percentage points annually. This spread is after controlling for substantial spurious persistence, which arises mechanically from the overlap of contemporaneous funds. Performance is noisy, however, and we find little investable persistence, meaning that it is difficult for investors in PE funds to identify top-quartile funds with top-quartile expected future performance.

Keywords: Persistence, private equity, venture capital, skill, learning

JEL Classification: G11, G12, G24, C11

Suggested Citation

Korteweg, Arthur G. and Sorensen, Morten, Skill and Luck in Private Equity Performance (October 29, 2015). Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Working Paper No. 179, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2419299 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2419299

Arthur G. Korteweg (Contact Author)

University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business ( email )

3670 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.marshall.usc.edu/personnel/arthur-korteweg

Morten Sorensen

Dartmouth College - Tuck School of Business ( email )

Hanover, NH 03755
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

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