Richard Ennis’s Insights: Are Endowment Managers Better Than the Rest?

Abstract

I compare five aspects of investing large educational endowments and public employee pension funds: operating environment and culture, institutional characteristics, expense ratio, risk habitat, and risk-adjusted performance. The most significant measurable differences between the two types of investing institutions are: 1) the amount they spend on investment management and 2) the degree of risk they take. In terms of risk-adjusted performance, endowments have underperformed public funds by a small margin for the 13 years ending June 30, 2021. There is no evidence that endowment managers have an edge over public fund managers of a type or magnitude that might translate to a performance advantage.