Are Private Equity Investors Good or Evil?

Measuring Institutional Investors’ Skill from Their Investments in Private Equity

Using a large sample of institutional investors’ private equity investments in venture and buyout funds, we estimate the extent to which investors’ skill affects returns from private equity investments. We first consider whether investors have differential skill by comparing the distribution of investors’ returns relative to the bootstrapped distribution that would occur if funds were randomly ...

Judging Good and Evil

Overview The use of " anti-virus " techniques in many modern worms recalls two stories: the " war " between virus writers and the possibility of a beneficial virus. This article examines both in light of recent events in the virus world. In early 2004, the release of Netsky began a rash of articles discussing " vigilante " coders trying to stop the spread of other worms. The war between Netsky'...

Should Investors Trust Equity Analysts?

This paper studies the holistic issue of the combination of analyst projection accuracy, diversity, and distribution. It first tracks the earnings per share and sales projections of a number of equity analysts for 17 representative U.S. companies using data from 1978 to 2012. It also compares the analysts’ consensus of earnings per share, sales, rating, and price target zone to identify the deg...

Good And Evil In Faust

‘Free Markets’: Public Good or Private Greed?

The fundamental question addressed in this paper is this: does the rise of free market orthodoxy indicate the triumph of ‘efficiency’ at the expense of ‘equity’? Or does it also, and possibly even primarily, reflect an attempt to capitalise on the distributive opportunities that have been created by the deteriorating macroeconomic environment and the conservative political climate of the late ‘...