The Journal of Finance

Should Investors Bet on the Jockey or the Horse? Evidence from the Evolution of Firms from Early Business Plans to Public Companies

Published: 01/23/2009   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2008.01429.x

STEVEN N. KAPLAN, BERK A. SENSOY, PER STRÖMBERG

We study how firm characteristics evolve from early business plan to initial public offering (IPO) to public company for 50 venture capital (VC)‐financed companies. Firm business lines remain remarkably stable while management turnover is substantial. Management turnover is positively related to alienable asset formation. We obtain similar results using all 2004 IPOs, suggesting that our main results are not specific to VC‐backed firms or the time period. The results suggest that, at the margin, investors in start‐ups should place more weight on the business (“the horse”) than on the management team (“the jockey”). The results also inform theories of the firm.

Indirect Incentives of Hedge Fund Managers

Published: 12/21/2015   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12384

JONGHA LIM, BERK A. SENSOY, MICHAEL S. WEISBACH

Indirect incentives exist in the money management industry when good current performance increases future inflows of capital, leading to higher future fees. For the average hedge fund, indirect incentives are at least 1.4 times as large as direct incentives from incentive fees and managers’ personal stakes in the fund. Combining direct and indirect incentives, manager wealth increases by at least $0.39 for a $1 increase in investor wealth. Younger and more scalable hedge funds have stronger flow‐performance relations, leading to stronger indirect incentives. These results have a number of implications for our understanding of incentives in the asset management industry.

The Effects of Stock Lending on Security Prices: An Experiment

Published: 04/09/2013   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12051

STEVEN N. KAPLAN, TOBIAS J. MOSKOWITZ, BERK A. SENSOY

We examine the impact of short selling by conducting a randomized stock lending experiment. Working with a large, anonymous money manager, we create an exogenous and sizeable shock to the supply of lendable shares by taking high loan fee stocks in the manager's portfolio and randomly making available and withholding stocks from the lending market. The experiment ran in two independent phases: the first, from September 5 to 18, 2008, with over $580 million of securities lent, and the second, from June 5 to September 30, 2009, with over $250 million of securities lent. While the supply shocks significantly reduce market lending fees and raise quantities, we find no evidence that returns, volatility, skewness, or bid–ask spreads are affected. The results provide novel evidence on the impact of shorting supply and do not indicate any adverse effects on stock prices from securities lending.

Measuring Institutional Investors’ Skill at Making Private Equity Investments

Published: 05/06/2019   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12783

DANIEL R. CAVAGNARO, BERK A. SENSOY, YINGDI WANG, MICHAEL S. WEISBACH

Using a large sample of institutional investors’ investments in private equity funds raised between 1991 and 2011, we estimate the extent to which investors’ skill affects their returns. Bootstrap analyses show that the variance of actual performance is higher than would be expected by chance, suggesting that some investors consistently outperform. Extending the Bayesian approach of Korteweg and Sorensen, we estimate that a one‐standard‐deviation increase in skill leads to an increase in annual returns of between one and two percentage points. These results are stronger in the earlier part of the sample period and for venture funds.