Benchmarking private equity: The direct alpha method
提出一种简单直观的年度化超额收益衡量方法（直接阿尔法），用于私募股权基金及类似难以估值资产的投资，该方法理论扎实，优于现有公共市场等价方法，并用真实现金流数据进行了对比验证。
We propose a simple and intuitive measure of the annualized excess return of investments in private equity (PE) funds, as well as in similar vehicles that hold hard-to-values assets. Our ‘Direct Alpha’ method is well-founded in theory and dominates the existing approaches to convert fund lifetime returns into inputs amenable for portfolio-wide optimization. Existing Public Market Equivalent (PME) approaches are either heuristic or involve significant approximation errors. Using real-world PE fund cash flow data, we juxtapose Direct Alpha against nearly all PME methods that have been in broad use.