Publications

2024
Working Paper

The Rise of Alternatives

By: Juliane Begenau, Pauline Liang and Emil Siriwardane

Since the 2000s, U.S. public pensions have shifted their risky investments towards alternative assets like private equity and hedge funds, some more aggressively than others. We explore several explanations for these cross-sectional trends, focusing on those implied by... View Details

Keywords: Investment Funds; Investment Return; Risk and Uncertainty

April 2024
Article

Fee Variation in Private Equity

By: Juliane Begenau and Emil N. Siriwardane

We study how investment fees vary within private-capital funds. Net-of-fee return clustering suggests that most funds have two tiers of fees, and we decompose differences across tiers into both management and performance-based fees. Managers of venture capital funds... View Details

Keywords: Pension Funds; Fee Dispersion; Search And Negotiation Frictions; Private Equity; Investment Funds

February 2023
Article

OTC Intermediaries

By: Andrea L. Eisfeldt, Bernard Herskovic, Sriram Rajan and Emil Siriwardane

We study the effect of dealer exit on prices and quantities in a model of an over-the-counter (OTC) market featuring a core-periphery network with bilateral trading costs. The model is calibrated using regulatory data on the entire U.S. credit default swap (CDS) market... View Details

Keywords: OTC Markets; Intermediaries; Dealers; Credit Default Swaps; Risk Sharing; Financial Markets; Networks; Price; Risk and Uncertainty

2020
Working Paper

An Empirical Guide to Investor-Level Private Equity Data from Preqin

By: Juliane Begenau, Claudia Robles-Garcia, Emil Siriwardane and Lulu Wang

This note provides guidance on the use of investor-level private equity data from Preqin for empirical research. Preqin primarily sources its cash flow data through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with U.S. public pensions. Our focus is on the components of... View Details

Keywords: Private Equity Returns; Prequin Data; Private Equity; Analytics and Data Science; Investment Return

August 2020
Article

Financial Market Risk Perceptions and the Macroeconomy

By: Carolin E. Pflueger, Emil Siriwardane and Adi Sunderam

We propose a novel measure of risk perceptions: the price of volatile stocks (PVS), defined as the book-to-market ratio of low-volatility stocks minus the book-to-market ratio of high-volatility stocks. PVS is high when perceived risk directly measured from surveys and... View Details

Keywords: Risk-centric Business Cycles; Cross-section Of Equities; Real Risk-free Rate; Real Investment; Financial Markets; Risk and Uncertainty; Perception; Investment

Find at Harvard

2020
Working Paper

How Do Private Equity Fees Vary Across Public Pensions?

By: Juliane Begenau and Emil Siriwardane

We study how investment fees vary within private-capital funds. Net-of-fee return clustering suggests that most funds have two tiers of fees, and we decompose differences across tiers into both management and performance-based fees. Managers of venture capital funds... View Details

Keywords: Pension Funds; Fee Dispersion; Search And Negotiation Frictions; Private Equity; Investment Funds

2018
Working Paper

OTC Intermediaries

By: Andrea L. Eisfeldt, Bernard Herskovic, Sriram Rajan and Emil Siriwardane

Over-the-counter (OTC) markets for financial assets are dominated by a relatively small number of core intermediaries and a large number of peripheral customers. In this paper, we develop a model of trade in a core-periphery network and estimate its key structural... View Details

Keywords: OTC Markets; Intermediaries; Dealers; Credit Default Swaps; Risk Sharing; Networks; Price; Risk and Uncertainty

2019
Working Paper

Do Banks Have an Edge?

By: Juliane Begenau and Erik Stafford

Overall, no! We show that the level and time series variation in cash flows for most bank activities are well matched by capital market portfolios with similar interest rate and credit risk to what banks report to hold. Ignoring operating expenses, bank loans earn high... View Details

Keywords: Banks; Market Efficiency; Bank Capital; Bank Debt; CAPM; Banking; Bank Deposits; Bank Funding Advantage; Leverage; Maturity Transformation; Replicating Portfolio; Efficiency; Banks and Banking; Capital Markets; Performance Evaluation; Performance Efficiency; Banking Industry; United States

September 2017 (Revised July 2021)
Case

Asset Allocation at the Cook County Pension Fund

By: Emil Siriwardane, Juliane Begenau and Yuval Gonczarowski

Nickol Hackett, chief investment officer of the Cook County Pension Fund, is responsible for investing the fund’s $9 billion worth of assets on behalf of the employees of Cook County, Illinois. Like many other defined-benefit pensions at the time, the Cook County... View Details

Keywords: Asset Management; Investment Funds; Financial Strategy; Decision Choices and Conditions