Do Private Equity Fund Managers Earn Their Fees? Compensation, Ownership, and Cash Flow Performance
研究了1984-2010年间837只私募股权基金的管理合同条款与业绩关系，发现高费用或低管理层持股并未降低净费用业绩，但薪酬在募资热潮中上升且转向不敏感于业绩的组成部分，分配行为暗示投资者与经理间的代理冲突。
We study the relations between management contract terms and performance in private equity using new data for 837 funds from 1984–2010. We find no evidence that higher fees or lower managerial ownership are associated with lower net-of-fee performance. Nevertheless, compensation rises and shifts to performance-insensitive components during fundraising booms. Further, the behavior of distributions around contractual fee triggers is consistent with an underlying agency conflict between investors and fund managers. Our evidence suggests that managers with higher fees deliver higher gross performance, and highlights that agency costs are an inevitable consequence of the information frictions endemic to agency relationships.