IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11136.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Smart Institutions, Foolish Choices? The Limited Partner Performance Puzzle

Author

Listed:
  • Josh Lerner
  • Antoinette Schoar
  • Wan Wong

Abstract

The returns that institutional investors realize from private equity investments differ dramatically across institutions. Using detailed and hitherto unexplored records of fund investors and performance, we document large heterogeneity in the performance of different classes of limited partners. In particular, endowments' annual returns are nearly 14% greater than average. Funds selected by investment advisors and banks lag sharply. These results are robust to controlling for the type and year of the investment, as well as to the use of different specifications. Analyses of reinvestment decisions and young funds suggest that the results are not primarily due to endowments' greater access to established funds. Finally, we examine the differences in the choice of intermediaries across various institutional investors and their relationship to success. We find that LPs that have higher average IRRs also tend to invest in older funds and have a smaller fraction of GPs in their geographic area, and that the performance of university endowments is correlated with measures of the quality and loyalty of the student body.

Suggested Citation

  • Josh Lerner & Antoinette Schoar & Wan Wong, 2005. "Smart Institutions, Foolish Choices? The Limited Partner Performance Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 11136, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11136
    Note: AP CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11136.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul A. Gompers & Andrew Metrick, 2001. "Institutional Investors and Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 229-259.
    2. Mayer, Colin & Yafeh, Yishay & Schoors, Koen, 2002. "Sources of Funds and Investment Activities of Venture Capital Funds: Evidence from Germany, Israel, Japan and the UK," CEPR Discussion Papers 3340, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Gromb, Denis & Vayanos, Dimitri, 2002. "Equilibrium and welfare in markets with financially constrained arbitrageurs," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 361-407.
    4. Steven N. Kaplan & Antoinette Schoar, 2005. "Private Equity Performance: Returns, Persistence, and Capital Flows," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1791-1823, August.
    5. Gompers, Paul & Lerner, Josh, 1996. "The Use of Covenants: An Empirical Analysis of Venture Partnership Agreements," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 463-498, October.
    6. Lerner, Josh & Schoar, Antoinette, 2004. "The illiquidity puzzle: theory and evidence from private equity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 3-40, April.
    7. Thomas Hellmann & Laura Lindsey & Manju Puri, 2008. "Building Relationships Early: Banks in Venture Capital," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(2), pages 513-541, April.
    8. James M. Poterba, 1989. "Venture Capital and Capital Gains Taxation," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 3, pages 47-68, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Steven Kaplan & Antoinette Schoar, 2003. "Private Equity Performance: Returns, Persistence and Capital," NBER Working Papers 9807, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Josef Lakonishok & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1992. "The Structure and Performance of the Money Management Industry," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 23(1992 Micr), pages 339-391.
    11. Paul A. Gompers & Josh Lerner, 1998. "What Drives Venture Capital Fundraising?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(1998 Micr), pages 149-204.
    12. Kenneth A. Froot & Melvyn Teo, 2004. "Equity Style Returns and Institutional Investor Flows," NBER Working Papers 10355, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Gompers, Paul & Lerner, Josh, 2000. "Money chasing deals? The impact of fund inflows on private equity valuation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 281-325, February.
    14. Grinblatt, Mark & Titman, Sheridan & Wermers, Russ, 1995. "Momentum Investment Strategies, Portfolio Performance, and Herding: A Study of Mutual Fund Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1088-1105, December.
    15. Gompers, Paul & Lerner, Josh, 1999. "An analysis of compensation in the U.S. venture capital partnership," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 3-44, January.
    16. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "The Limits of Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, March.
    17. Barberis, Nicholas & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "Style investing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 161-199, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rin, Marco Da & Hellmann, Thomas & Puri, Manju, 2013. "A Survey of Venture Capital Research," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 573-648, Elsevier.
    2. Ulf Axelson & Per Strömberg & Michael S. Weisbach, 2009. "Why Are Buyouts Levered? The Financial Structure of Private Equity Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1549-1582, August.
    3. Cumming, Douglas & Fleming, Grant & Suchard, Jo-Ann, 2005. "Venture capitalist value-added activities, fundraising and drawdowns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 295-331, February.
    4. Andrew Metrick & Ayako Yasuda, 2011. "Venture Capital and Other Private Equity: a Survey," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 17(4), pages 619-654, September.
    5. Hall, Bronwyn H. & Lerner, Josh, 2010. "The Financing of R&D and Innovation," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 609-639, Elsevier.
    6. Ludovic Phalippou & Oliver Gottschalg, 2009. "The Performance of Private Equity Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(4), pages 1747-1776, April.
    7. Gael Imad'Eddine & Armin Schwienbacher, 2013. "International Capital Flows into the European Private Equity Market," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 19(2), pages 366-398, March.
    8. Alexander Peter Groh & Heinrich von Liechtenstein, 2011. "The First Step of the Capital Flow from Institutions to Entrepreneurs: the Criteria for Sorting Venture Capital Funds," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 17(3), pages 532-559, June.
    9. Jean-Noël Barrot, 2017. "Investor Horizon and the Life Cycle of Innovative Firms: Evidence from Venture Capital," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(9), pages 3021-3043, September.
    10. James A. Brander & Edward Egan & Thomas F. Hellmann, 2010. "Government Sponsored versus Private Venture Capital: Canadian Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: International Differences in Entrepreneurship, pages 275-320, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Edelen, Roger M. & Ince, Ozgur S. & Kadlec, Gregory B., 2016. "Institutional investors and stock return anomalies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 472-488.
    12. Paul Gompers & Josh Lerner, 2001. "The Venture Capital Revolution," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 145-168, Spring.
    13. Douglas Cumming & Grant Fleming & Armin Schwienbacher, 2009. "Style Drift in Private Equity," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(5‐6), pages 645-678, June.
    14. Groh, Alexander P. & Liectenstein, Heinrich, 2009. "The first step of the capital flow from institutions to entrepreneurs: The criteria for sorting venture capital funds," IESE Research Papers D/795, IESE Business School.
    15. Alperovych, Yan & Hübner, Georges & Lobet, Fabrice, 2015. "How does governmental versus private venture capital backing affect a firm's efficiency? Evidence from Belgium," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 508-525.
    16. Steven N. Kaplan & Antoinette Schoar, 2005. "Private Equity Performance: Returns, Persistence, and Capital Flows," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1791-1823, August.
    17. Groh, Alexander P. & Gottschalg, Oliver, 2009. "The opportunity cost of capital of US buyouts," IESE Research Papers D/780, IESE Business School.
    18. Sofia Johan & Dorra Najar, 2011. "The Role of Law, Corruption and Culture in Investment Fund Manager Fees," Post-Print halshs-00639925, HAL.
    19. Cohen, Randolph B. & Gompers, Paul A. & Vuolteenaho, Tuomo, 2002. "Who underreacts to cash-flow news? evidence from trading between individuals and institutions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 409-462.
    20. Fang, Lily & Ivashina, Victoria & Lerner, Josh, 2015. "The disintermediation of financial markets: Direct investing in private equity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 160-178.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11136. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.