The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:32:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png Private Equity in the 21st Century – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 Private Equity in the 21st Century https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2011/01/28/private-equity-in-the-21st-century/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=private-equity-in-the-21st-century https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2011/01/28/private-equity-in-the-21st-century/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:28:39 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/?p=15160?d=20150106101204EST Posted by R. Christopher Small, Co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on Friday, January 28, 2011
Editor's Note:

The following post comes to us from David Robinson, Professor of Finance at Duke University, and Berk Sensoy of the Department of Finance at Ohio State University.

In the paper, Private Equity in the 21st Century: Cash Flows, Performance, and Contract Terms from 1984-2010, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, we use a large, proprietary database of private equity cash flows and management contract terms over the period 1984-2010, comprising close to 40% of the U.S. Venture Economics universe, to provide new evidence on the determinants of private equity performance, cash flow behavior, and contract terms. The data are the first available for academic research to include cash flow information for a large sample of private equity funds extending beyond 2003, to include information on general partner capital commitments, and to combine cash flow information with the terms of the management contracts.

Our analysis is centered around two interrelated themes. First, we investigate the impact of broader market conditions on private equity markets. While it is well known that public and private equity markets are correlated through time, with shared periods of boom and bust, the implications of this correlation for private equity investors and managers are not well understood.

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