We investigate how temporary ownership by private equity firms affects industry structure, competition and welfare. Temporary ownership leads to strong investment incentives because equilibrium resale prices are determined partly by buyers' incentives to block rivals from obtaining assets. These...

Private equity funds pay particular attention to capital structure when executing leveraged buyouts, creating an interesting setting for examining capital structure theories. Using a large, detailed, international sample of buyouts from 1980-2008, we find that buyout leverage is unrelated to the...

This paper presents a model of the financial structure of private equity firms. In the model, the general partner of the firm encounters a sequence of deals over time where the exact quality of each deal cannot be credibly communicated to investors. We show that the optimal financing arrangement...

Private placement debt issues are more effective than public bonds in resolving information asymmetries and controlling moral hazard problems. Firms that issue only private placements (non-switchers) are found to have more information problems than firms that have access to the public bond...

Most studies of corporate investment assume perfect capital markets and ignore the influence of financing decisions on real investment. This paper explores whether capital market imperfections are helpful in explaining real corporate investment. I develop a variant of a q-theory model of...