Research Spotlight: Gender Diversity and Performance in Venture Capital

The seventh installment of Datapoints’ Research Spotlight series features a paper co-authored by Wharton Real Estate faculty member Sophie Calder-Wang. Published in the Journal of Finance Economics 142, “And the children shall lead: Gender diversity and performance in venture capital” uses data related to the gender of venture capital partners’ children to analyze what promotes gender diversity in hiring and whether a diverse workforce leads to better firm performance and investment returns.

The authors used Preqin to retrieve data on funds raised and fund returns for a portion of the firms in their sample. Preqin provides comprehensive coverage of the private equity industry, including information on various types of investments—buyouts, venture capital, distressed investing, mezzanine, etc.—as well as fund performance, fundraising, fund managers, and more.