Showing results 1 - 6 of 6
| Josh Lerner
August 20, 2020, Paper: "Critics of private equity have warned that the high leverage often used in PE‐backed companies could contribute to the fragility of the financial system during economic crises. The proliferation of poorly structured transactions during booms could increase the vulnerability of the economy to downturns. The alternative hypothesis is that PE, with its operating capabilities, expertise in financial restructuring, and…
| Josh Lerner | Ramana Nanda
May 14, 2020, Paper, "Governments worldwide have taken steps to bolster their venture capital sectors in response to the COVID-19 crisis. This column questions whether venture-backed innovation is particularly vulnerable to economic downturns, and finds that early-stage venture investment falls sharply during recessions. The quantity and quality of venture-backed innovation declines particularly for early-stage firms, underscoring the concerns…
| Josh Lerner | Ramana Nanda
2020, Paper, "Although late-stage venture capital (VC) activity did not change dramatically in the first two months after the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S., early-stage VC activity declined by 38%. The particular sensitivity of early-stage VC investment to market conditions-which we show to be common across recessions spanning four decades from 1976 to 2017-raises questions about the pro-cyclicality of VC and its implications for innovation…
| Josh Lerner | Victoria Ivashina
Looking for Alternatives: Pension Investments around the World, 2008 to 2017. Victoria Ivashina, Josh Lerner, August 24, 2018, Paper, "Using hitherto-unexplored data, this paper provides a first look into pension funds’ allocations to alternative asset classes around the world. On average, in the ten years following the financial crisis, allocations to private equity and real estate nearly doubled, representing about 20% of assets under…
| Josh Lerner
Private Equity and Financial Fragility during the Crisis. Josh Lerner, 2017, Paper, "Does private equity increase financial fragility during economic crises? To investigate this issue, we examine the financial decisions and performance of private equity-backed companies in the United Kingdom during the 2008 financial crisis. We find that PE-backed companies experienced a smaller decline in investment, relative to a carefully selected control…
| Josh Lerner
The use and misuse of patent data: Issues for corporate finance and beyond, By Josh Lerner, March 2015, Paper.
"In the past several years, an increasing number of papers in the finance, accounting, and related literatures have made use of patent data. This growth has reflected the broadening of the topics seen as relevant to corporate finance researchers. As Zingales (2000) argued, the wave of initial public offerings of purely human capital…