> The studies have been done, and there is a much stronger correlation between past performance and future performance in private equity than in the public markets.
I can't find links to the papers themselves, but the research was published by Lerner and Stahlman at HBS. They looked at firms that had top quartile venture funds and then looked to see what percentage of them remained in the top quartile in the subsequent fund. For public market managers, the measure was the same but on a year over year basis rather than fund over fund.