What Do University Endowment Managers Worry About? An Analysis of Alternative Asset Investments and Background Income / Harvey S. Rosen, Alexander J. W. Sappington.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosen, Harvey S.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Sappington, Alexander J. W.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21271.

NBER working paper series no. w21271

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.

Summary:

This paper examines whether university endowment managers think only in terms of the assets they manage, or also take into account background income, the other flows of income to the university. Specifically, we test whether the level and variability of a university's background income (e.g., from tuition and government grants) affect its endowment's allocations to so-called alternative assets such as hedge funds, private equity, and venture capital. We find that both the probability of investing in alternative assets and the proportion of the portfolio invested in such assets increase with expected background income and decrease with its variability.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2015.