Real Estate Investment Acquisition Rules for Life Insurance Companies and Pension Funds: A Survey

Real estate comprises the major wealth of the United States as well as the world. Life insurance companies and pension funds are rapidly becoming major investors in real estate due to their large portfolios and annual cash inflows. Aggregate inflows of life insurance companies and pension funds are estimated to be about 150 billion dollars per year. Increasing amounts of these funds are believed to be going into real estate investments. This study surveys life insurance companies and pension managers on all facets of their real estate investments. The survey covers real estate portfolio size and type, portfolio composition, investment by property type, international investments, before-tax analysis, after-tax analysis, diversification strategies, computer usage, holding period assumptions and criteria for obtaining mortgages, equity positions and construction loans. The results of this study are then compared and contrasted with previous studies.     

Employer Pension Contributions and 401(k) Plans: A Note

We investigate the pension choices of over 800 firms between 1988 and 1996. Using the data on pension plan finances from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 5500, required annually from firms sponsoring plans, and on firm finances from Compustat, we find support that a 10 percent increase in the use of 401(k) plans reduces pension costs per worker by 1.8 to 2.0 percent. Collective bargaining helps to mitigate the decline in employer costs.     

Changing Administrative Practices in American Unions: A Research Note

This note presents findings from the first longitudinal study of the administrative practices of American unions. Our surveys, conducted in 1990 and 2000, gathered information on the hiring, human resource, and financial/strategic planning practices of U.S.-based national and international unions. The results indicate that American unions are changing their criteria for hiring staff and moving toward more formal human resource policies and systematic financial and strategic planning practices.     

Further Evidence on the Performance of Funds of Funds: The Case of Real Estate Mutual Funds

Funds of funds (FOFs) are created when investment companies invest in other investment companies. Although the additional layer of fees incurred by FOFs has a negative effect on returns, there is empirical evidence that real estate FOFs generate superior performance net of fees and risk adjustments. The evidence is inconsistent with a growing consensus that most actively managed mutual funds do not, on average, generate excess returns after adjusting for fees and risk. This study explains this apparent contradiction and finds that most real estate FOFs do not outperform their benchmarks under alternative risk adjustment specifications.     

Spillovers, Investment Incentives and the Property Rights Theory of the Firm

This paper examines the property rights theory of the firm when a manager's relationship-specific investment can be partially appropriated by the owner of an asset even if cooperation breaks down. The investments of non owners may then be devalued, but are seldom wholly lost to the owner. With such spillovers, the outside-option principle can be incorporated into the Grossman-Hart-Moore framework without implying that ownership demotivates. Enriched predictions on the determinants of integration emerge.     

The Effects of Local Government Expenditure and Property Taxes on Investment*

The effect of local government property taxes and expenditures on investment in housing and manufacturing plant and equipment is analyzed in theoretic model and tested empirically. An investment model of firm behavior is developed and implications regarding the effects are deduced. These implications are tested in a single equation model of investment in single- and multifamily structures and capital investment in manufacturing in eleven urban cities and their eighty-nine suburbs. Tentative conclusions that additional municipal expenditures increase investment and a higher effective property tax rate diminishes it are supported and that cities have on average exhausted the net benefits of increasing balanced budgets.     

关于Chebyshev不等式的一点注记

本文给出了 Chebyshev 不等式的一种改进形式,从而得到一种更简便的估计。并就各种情况给出了严格的证明。     

A Note on Hybrid Mortgages

We extend previous research on traditional one-year adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) by analyzing the performance of 3/27 hybrid instruments. Under this contract innovation, which first appeared in the mid-1990s, note rates are fixed for three years after which they convert to a traditional one-year adjustment schedule with periodic and lifetime caps. We find high rates of prepayment, particularly at time of initial rate adjustment, and relatively high rates of default, as would be consistent with the payment shock that often affects adjustable-rate loans.     

Property Investment and Rental Rate under Housing Price Uncertainty: A Real Options Approach

The conventional wisdom that housing prices are the present value of future rents ignores the fact that unlike dividends on stocks, rent is not discretionary. Housing price uncertainty can affect household property investments, which in turn affect rent. By extending the theory of investment under uncertainty, we model the renter's decision to buy a house and the landlord's decision to sell as the exercising of real options of waiting and examine real options effects on rent. Using data from Hong Kong and mainland China, we find a significant effect of housing price on rent and draw important policy implications.     

A Note on the Equivalent Risk Class Assumption

The assumption that firms within the same industry are subject to equivalent degrees of basic business uncertainty is widely employed in empirical studies of capital structure effects and underlies many of the approaches to valuation in the security analysis literature.

This paper presents test of this important, but previously untested, assumption. It is shown that, given the validity of a measure of the cyclical variability of a firm's earnings as a proxy uncertainty measure, homogeneity of basic business uncertainty is not achieved by confining samples to single industries. Variation in the proxy measure is as wide within industry groups as among those groups     

私募基金参与跨国并购:核心动机、特定优势及其影响

随着经济全球化和金融创新的深入发展,私募基金参与跨国并购的交易数目和交易金额不断上升,逐步成为跨国并购的重要主体。有别于传统跨国公司的并购活动,私募基金并不意图掌控被并购企业的长期经营权,而是利用各国资本收益率的差异,对被收购企业进行财务重组后在资本市场上套利。本文对私募基金参与跨国并购的机理进行理论解析,分析私募基金参与跨国并购的核心动机与特定优势,探讨私募基金主导的跨国并购对东道国相关产业及被收购企业的影响,并就私募基金并购或注资国内企业提出政策建议。     

关于格利森铣刀盘模型计算问题的注记

本文应读者要求,着重介绍了格利森硬质合金铣刀盘的数学模型在求解过程中的技巧问题。     

An Analysis of the Determinants of Transaction Frequency of Institutional Commercial Real Estate Investment Property

This study examines the correlation of the frequency of the sale of investment-grade property with national, regional and local variables, including property- and owner-specific characteristics. More specifically, the study identifies the primary factors that "explain" intertemporal changes in transaction frequency in the underlying properties used to develop the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) index. Understanding these factors yields important information that can be used by firms when forming market expectations and developing investment strategies.     

A Note on Quality Disclosure and Competition

Competitive pressure is lower in markets where goods are more differentiated. I analyze how a change in the degree of horizontal product differentiation affects the incentives of duopolists to disclose quality information. If disclosure is costly, then a firm discloses high qualities but conceals low qualities in equilibrium. The higher the disclosure cost, the higher the equilibrium threshold below which firms conceal quality information. I show that the effect of product differentiation on quality disclosure depends on the cost of disclosure. For low (high) disclosure costs, a firm discloses more (respectively, less) quality information if goods become more differentiated.