Impact-oriented funds: overview and descriptive analysis of the market

The present thesis concerns the analysis of the market of social impact funds. The elaborate has been divided into several parts: first of all, an examination of the present literature, initially for the private equity and venture capital and the funds in these areas, with particular interest in hybrid funds. Subsequently, the theme of social-impact investments was deepened, focusing very much on the funds that undertake this type of investments. The final part of the thesis was created by generating a database containing information on almost 300 funds and 1,000 companies in which they invest. After an accurate description of the variables and the logic used for the construction of the different matrices composing the database, a series of analyses and descriptive statistics on the sample were carried out.