We study the liquidity properties of private equity cash flows using data from 837 buyout and venture capital funds from 1984-2010. Most cash flow variation at a point in time is diversifiable – either idiosyncratic to a given fund or explained by the fund's age. Both capital calls and...

Public and private equity waves move together. Using quarterly cash-flow data for a large sample of venture capital and buyout funds from 1984-2010, we investigate the implications of this co-cyclicality for understanding private equity cash flows and performance. In the cross-section, varying...

General Partners (GPs) in private equity face a trade-off between focusing their skills and effort on fewer investments to earn higher returns, or investing more broadly to reduce risk through diversification. Using a novel, deal-level dataset of 5,925 global investments from 1999 to 2016, we...

We develop a model of private equity in which many empirical patterns arise endogenously. Our model rests solely on two critical features of this market: moral hazard for General partners (GPs) and illiquidity risk for Limited Partners (LPs). The equilibrium fund structure incentivizes GPs with...