Household Demand for Private Equity

Sangmin (Simon) Oh, Joint Program in Financial Economics PhD student

In this paper, I study the demand for private equity by U.S. households using monthly security-level data from Addepar and yearly data from Preqin and Private Equity International. The monthly frequency in Addepar allows me to identify the exact timing of capital commitments, contributions, and distributions, while existing data only provides a yearly snapshot for a subset of the institutional investors at best. Understanding the allocation of household wealth to private equity and its relation to other asset classes is particularly important as both regulators and the industry are exploring how to increase access for retail investors to private companies