The New World of Private Equity.

• Position: Conferences

The NBER held a conference on "The New World of Private Equity" on April 4 and 5. Organizers Josh Lerner, NBER and Harvard Business School, and Per Stromberg, NBER and Stockholm Institute for Financial Research, brought together a group of academics who study this subject with professionals who work in the field. These papers were discussed:

Shourun Guo and Edith S. Hotchkiss, Boston College, and Weihong Song, University of Cincinnati, "Do Buyouts (Still) Create Value?"

Discussant: Jeremy C. Stein, Harvard University and NBER

Ulf Axelson, Stockholm Institute for Financial Research; Tim Jenkinson, Oxford University; Per Stromberg; and Michael S. Weisbach, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and NBER, "Leverage and Pricing in Buyouts: An Empirical Analysis"

Discussant: Christopher James, University of Florida

Alexander Ljungqvist, New York University, and Matthew Richardson and Daniel Wolfenzon, New York University and NBER, "The Investment Behavior of Buyout Funds: Theory and Evidence"

Discussant: Mike Wright, University of Nottingham

Alexander Peter Groh, University of Navarra, and Oliver Gottschalg, HEC School of Management, "Measuring The Risk Adjusted Performance of U.S. Buyouts"

Discussant: Andrew Metrick, Yale University and NBER

Joost Driessen, Tse-Chun Lin, and Ludovic Phalippou, University of Amsterdam, "A New Method to Estimate Risk and Return of Non-traded Assets from Aggregate Cash Flows: the Case of Private Equity Funds"

Discussant: Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, Northwestern University and NBER

Sharon P. Katz, Harvard University, "Earnings Management and Conservatism: The Role of Private Equity Sponsors"

Discussant: Yael Hochberg, Northwestern University

Steven J. Davis, University of Chicago and NBER; John Haltiwanger, University of Maryland and NBER; Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda, Bureau of the Census; and Josh Lerner, "Private Equity and Employment"

Discussant: Antoinette Schoar, MIT and NBER

Steven N. Kaplan, University of Chicago and NBER; and Mark M. Klebanov and Morten Sorensen, University of Chicago, "Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter?"

Discussant: Malcolm Baker, Harvard University and NBER

Toby E. Stuart and Soojin Yim, Harvard University, "Board Interlocks and the Propensity to be Targeted in Private Equity Transactions"

Discussant: Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, Columbia University

Phillip Leslie and Paul Oyer, Stanford University and NBER, "Managerial Incentives and Strategic Change: Evidence from Private Equity"

Discussant: Bengt Holmstrom, MIT and NBER

Hotchkiss and her co-authors examine whether, and how, leveraged buyouts from the most recent wave of public-to-private transactions create value. For a sample of 192 buyouts completed between 1990 and 2006, they show that these deals are somewhat more...