# Profs Asker & Ljungqvist's research on investments by private vs. public companies

1 July 15, 2013 Financial Times ![Financial Times logo](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/assets/images/uat_025700.jpg?itok=LSPbU2V1)>

Excerpt from the [Financial Times](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/49a80fca-eb28-11e2-bfdb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2blKQFTYp) -- "Investors depend on long-term returns from stocks to fund their retirements. What a nasty irony, therefore, that public ownership gives company managers reason to favour short-term profits over long-term growth. In a recent paper, [John Asker](http://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/john-asker), Joan Farre-Mensa and [Alexander Ljungqvist](http://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/alexander-ljungqvist) – researchers at New York University and Harvard – find new evidence of this. They compare investment levels at a large sample of private and publicly traded companies over a decade. They find that the private ones invest more than the public ones, growing their total assets by, on average, 6.8 per cent a year versus 3.7 per cent."

[Read more](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/49a80fca-eb28-11e2-bfdb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2blKQFTYp)

Additional coverage appeared on the [Financial Times](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8177af34-eb21-11e2-bfdb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2blKQFTYp) and [Forbes](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/29/how-the-worlds-dumbest-idea-killed-the-us-economic-recovery/).