Private Equity and Productivity in US Healthcare

Funded Research Proposal

Private equity (PE) investment in US healthcare has increased dramatically in recent years. On one hand, widespread PE participation may be one avenue to stem rising costs and increase productivity, which have been elusive objects in US healthcare. Research from other sectors has shown that PE firms apply best-in-class management practices to improve productivity and firm value. On the other hand, high powered financial incentives for PE managers may create conflicts with the interests of consumers and of taxpayers, who finance about 45% of healthcare spending. This project aims to study how PE investment affects quality and productivity of healthcare delivery in the US, issues of first order importance for both policy and business. We have assembled the most comprehensive set of data resources used to study this question – confidential micro data on PE investments in healthcare firms, and national data on services, spending, and outcomes for about 30 million Medicare beneficiaries over 2000–17. We will deploy a differences-in differences research design, exploiting variation in the timing of PE acquisitions across firms over this long panel. We will examine effects on 1) growth 2) operating efficiency, and 3) quality of care delivered, over the short and long-run.Read More

Organizational Change and the Dynamics of Innovation: Formal R&D Structure and Intrafirm Inventor Networks

Published Research

Prior research has argued and shown that firms with centralized R&D produce broader innovations relative to decentralized firms, but the organizational mechanisms underlying this relationship are underexplored. This gap limits our understanding of whether and how formal R&D structure can be used as a lever to influence research outcomes.Read More

Economics of Leveraged Buyouts: Theory and Evidence from the UK Private Equity Industry

Working Papers

Empirical analysis of a sample of companies with private equity (PE) ownership in the UK shows that PE firms act as deep-pocket investors for their portfolio companies, rescuing them if they fall in financial distress.Read More

Does Private Equity Ownership Make Firms Cleaner? The Role Of Environmental Liability Risks

Working Papers

As VC firms have an acute interest in high-tech companies, they potentially bear substantial risk of patent litigation. In this project, we aim at looking into the following questions: how do ex-ante and ex-post patent litigation risks affect VC firms’ investment strategies and how those risks is propagated among all portfolio companies they have invested?Read More

In the Shadow of the Valley: Private Equity Firms’ Increased Prominence in High-Tech Acquisitions

Funded Research Proposal

Why and how do private equity (PE) firms engage in technology acquisitions, and how do they create and capture value in these transactions? Observational data shows initial evidence that not only are PE firms engaging in an increasing number of technology buyouts, they are also seemingly behaving in distinct ways from both corporate acquirers, as well as PE firms in industries other than high-tech.Read More

The Influence of Private Equity Experience on Corporate Transactions

Funded Research Proposal

This project considers whether CEOs and other top managers whose professional backgrounds are in private equity undertake different and/or more successful acquisitions and divestitures than CEOs and other top managers who do not have professional backgrounds in private equity.Read More