Microdata Access Grant 2021. Authors: Rob Timans (Tilburg University – Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Science); Dirk Bezemer (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen – Faculteit Gedrags- en Maatschappijwetenschappen); (Johan Heilbron (Uppsala University).
Private Equity (PE) is a form of finance in which a group of investors invests in companies for a limited time period. PE is hotly contested. In some high-profile cases, PE investments led to substantial financial difficulties for companies (such as HEMA). The recent expansion of PE into sectors that are traditionally not for-profit (such as health care and day nurseries) have led to further public unease and political scrutiny. This gives rise to important questions. Should these activities be welcomed? Are the problems related to PE investment to be viewed as incidents? Or do they indicate structural problems with PE involvement? Academic research into these questions has not yielded clear answers. The main reason for this is the lack of adequate data. The original contribution of this research will be a comprehensive study into the longer-term effects of PE activity specifically for a large number of Dutch firms. A second novelty is that we will build a unique firm-level dataset which brings together information from seven sources. This will allow us to ask new questions, and find new answers.
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