Private equity and workers’ career paths: the role of technological change

Ashwini Agrawal and Prasanna Tambe

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We analyze a new dataset on workers’ career paths to examine whether private equity (PE) investments can have positive spillover effects on workers. We study leveraged buyouts in the context of recent information technology (IT) diffusion, and find evidence supporting the argument that many employees of companies acquired by PE investors gain transferable, IT-complementary human capital. Our estimates indicate that these workers experience increases in both long-run employability and wages relative to what they would have realized in the absence of PE investment. The findings underscore PE’s role in mitigating the effects of workforce skill obsolescence resulting from technological change.

JEL-codes: G30 G31 J24 M51 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-09-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Published in Review of Financial Studies, 1, September, 2016, 29(9), pp. 2455 - 2489. ISSN: 0893-9454

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/69476/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:69476

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().