Fund ownership, wealth, and risk-taking: Evidence on private equity managers
研究私募股权管理者自有资金投入对其投资决策的影响，发现管理者所有权越高，越倾向于选择低风险公司并增加债务，从而缓解对过度风险承担的担忧。
Private equity (PE) managers are required to invest their own money in the funds they manage. We examine the incentive effects of this ownership on the delegated acquisition decision. A simple model shows that PE managers select less risky firms and use more debt, the higher their ownership. We test these predictions for a sample of Norwegian PE funds, using managers’ wealth to capture their relative risk aversion. As predicted, the target company’s cash-flow risk decreases and leverage increases with the manager’s ownership scaled by wealth. Moreover, the overall portfolio risk decreases with ownership, mitigating widespread concerns about excessive risk-taking.