Empirical Analysis

Thanks to Jake Gersen, Todd Henderson, Daryl Levinson, Jens Ludwig, Richard McAdams, Tom Miles, Matthew Stephenson, David Strauss, Adrian Vermeule, Noah Zatz, and participants at a workshop at The University of Chicago Law School for helpful comments.

We are grateful to Susan Bandes, Elizabeth Foote, Jacob Gersen, Brian Leiter, Anup Malani, Richard McAdams, Elizabeth Mertz, Jonathan Nash, Eric Posner, Adam Samaha, Larry Solum, David Strauss, Noah Zatz, and participants in a work-inprogress lunch at The University of Chicago Law School for valuable comments. We are also grateful to the Chicago Judges Project, and in particular to Dean Saul Levmore, for relevant support.

We thank Eric Posner, Richard Posner, Peter Strauss, and Adrian Vermeule for helpful comments. We are also grateful to Rachael Dizard, Casey Fronk, Darius Horton, Matthew Johnson, Bryan Mulder, Brett Reynolds, Matthew Tokson, and Adam Wells for superb research assistance.

The authors would like to thank Jason Friedman, Ben Schaye, and Grace Tabib for excellent research assistance. The authors also thank participants in workshops at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and the University of Minnesota School of Law for helpful comments.

We are thankful for comments from workshop participants at the American Bar Foundation, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and The University of Chicago; and from Douglas G. Baird, Richard Brooks, David Gerber, Lani Guinier, John Heinz, Bill Kidder, Richard Lempert, Tracey Meares, Randall Picker, Eric Posner, Max Schanzenbach, Stephen M. Shavell, David Weisbach, Justin Wolfers, and Robert Yalen. We thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for financial support.We alone are responsible for the contents and for all remaining errors.

We are grateful to Rosalind Dixon, Heather Gerken, Rick Hasen, Sam Issacharoff, Jonathan Masur, Rick Pildes, Adam Samaha, Max Schanzenbach, Josh Sellers, Cass Sunstein, Emerson Tiller, Dan Tokaji, and Fred Vars for helpful comments and conversations. We would also like to thank the workshop participants at Northwestern University School of Law, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Yale Law School, the Searle Symposium on Empirical Studies of Civil Liability, and the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies. Carolyn Sha and Annabelle Yang provided invaluable research assistance.

My thanks to Catherine Kiwala, for her excellent research assistance, and to participants in The University of Chicago’s Developmental Psychology Graduate Seminar for their helpful comments. The Arnold and Frieda Shure Research Fund and the Kanter Family Foundation Initiatives Fund provided support for this research.

The initial research for this Article was conducted while I was an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at Columbia Law School. I would like to thank Bernie Black, John Donohue, Merritt Fox, Ron Gilson, Victor Goldberg, Jeff Gordon, Zohar Goshen, Michael Guttentag, Todd Henderson, Michael Jensen, Steven Kaplan, Michael Klausner, Ed Rock, Jeff Strnad, Susan Woodward, the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review, and participants in The Going-private Phenomenon: Causes and Implications, the annual meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, and the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Lunch for comments. I especially thank the venture capitalists, venture capital lawyers, and representatives of institutional investors who were willing to answer my questions and in some cases provide the limited partnership agreements that are the focus of this Article. Those who have given me permission to name them include: Steven Anderson at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Alan Austin at Silver Lake Partners; Micah Avni of Jerusalem Global Ventures; Jonathan Axelrad at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Thomas Beaudoin at Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault; Bill Campbell at Ater Wynne; Craig Dauchy at Cooley Godward Kronish; Ken DeAngelis at Austin Ventures; Alex Gould at Stanford Law School; Ryan Lester, formerly at O’Melveny & Myers; Andrei Manoliu; J.B. Pritzker; John Quigley at Nassau Capital; and Mark Tanoury at Cooley Godward Kronish. I owe special thanks to Susan Woodward at Sand Hill Econometrics for sharing data on VC performance with me.