Challenges to scaling sustainable private equity markets in emerging Europe

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to identify the main barriers to sustainable private equity market development in emerging European countries. The cross-country panel data analysis that was used in this paper will focus on the main determinants of the private equity investments over the period 2000-2013. We followed the methodology developed by Gompers and Lerner in order to estimate a panel data model with fixed and random effects. Starting from the existing literature, we analyzed variables that were confirmed by the previous studies and we also introduce new variables, such as the corruption index, uncertainty index, and regulation. The results of our study confirmed the existing hypothesis regarding the barriers to private equity development, such as the unemployment rate, the lack of exit mechanisms due to the low level of market capitalization, and the corruption.