In this paper, we have sought to understand what has been the performance of university endowments, and what drives the observed pattern of performance. Our key observations are as follows: (a) the endowments of elite universities have grown dramatically faster than endowments overall; (b)...

This paper investigates the performance of private equity partnerships using a data set of individual fund returns collected by Venture Economics. Over the sample period, average fund returns net of fees approximately equal the S\amp;P 500 although there is a large degree of heterogeneity....

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....