The Role of Real Estate in an Institutional Investor's Portfolio Revisited

Many papers have recently pointed out that institutional investors allocate only a very small fraction of their portfolio to real estate, much smaller than theory would dictate. This raises the question, are institutional investors underinvested in real estate equities? Or do we simply have the wrong priors? This paper is an attempt to provide some new insights into this asset allocation paradox. The key conclusions of the paper are several: First, unlike other assets, it would appear that real estate, and real estate diversification, pays off at the very time when the benefits are most needed, that is, when consumption growth opportunities are low. Second, real estate returns are predictable. In fact, the amount of predictability in real estate returns appears to be about the same as in stock returns. Third, real estate performs well in an asset-liability framework. Fourth, the chance of experiencing a large loss on real estate over a long horizon is quite small. We also report here that private sector commercial real estate investments represent between 6 and 12 percent of investable wealth in the United States. Thus, it follows (if one believes the capital asset pricing model) that if institutional investors were to invest more in real estate (up to 12 percent of their assets), they should be able to eliminate nonmarket or unique risk. All of this leaves us a bit dumbfounded as to why institutional investors hold only between 2 and 3 percent of their assets in real estate.     

The Emerging Role of the European Commission in Merger and Acquisition Monitoring: The Boeing–McDonnell Douglas Case

The object of this study is to evaluate the consequences of the application of the EEC Regulation 4064/89 to non–European companies. We focus on the Boeing–McDonnell Douglas merger case, one of the first non–European mergers considered by the Commission. The analysis of abnormal returns on the two securities shows that the threat of a ban of the merger by the Commission were not perceived as credible at first. But when Boeing decided to ask the support of the American government, just after the decision of the European Commission to extend its investigations to the long term exclusivity contracts, the role of the Commission emerged.     

上市公司并购重组支付方式体系存在的问题及对策

上市公司并购重组在促进产业结构调整、优化社会资源配置方面发挥了日益重要的作用,而丰富、灵活的并购重组支付方式是提高并购市场效率的关键之一。本文简要介绍了国内上市公司并购重组支付体系概况,重点分析存在的问题,并结合国内外并购市场案例及实证数据,对并购创新支付工具作了评述,提出完善上市公司并购重组支付体系的政策建议,包括在并购交易中先行推出定向可转债、引入储架发行制度、论证认股权证试点的可行性、支持券商提供并购支付融资工具等。     

Pricing and supplier concentration in the private client segment of the audit market: Market power or competition?

This study differs from prior audit-pricing studies as (1) it focuses on the issue of price competition in the (small) private client segment of the audit market and (2) addresses the questions of whether and how the audit-pricing model changed in that market between 1989 and 1997. Given the significant increases in market concentration and two big audit firm mergers in that period, we try to assess whether price competition (market power) has increased (decreased) or decreased (increased). We use Belgian data on privately owned companies from 1989 and 1997 for our analyses. We find that audit fees are significantly associated with the incumbent auditor's market share both in 1989 and 1997. Our results are in line with prior studies on public client samples and hence do not support prior assumptions that there are no price premia charged by large auditors in the small client segment of the audit market. As to the evolution of audit pricing in the private client segment of the Belgian audit market between 1989 and 1997, we find that the impact of various audit fee determinants changed significantly and report evidence supportive of increased price competition.     

Target Firm Returns: Does the Form of Payment Affect Abnormal Returns?

Research indicates that at the time of a takeover announcement, target firm shareholders receiving cash earn larger abnormal returns than those receiving stock. Our work confirms that cash targets receive larger direct payments from bidders and that the size of target firm abnormal returns is related to the relative size of this direct payment. Once we control for the size of the payment, however, we find the target firm abnormal returns to be unrelated to the payment method. Thus the relationship between payment method and target firm abnormal returns is indirect. This finding is important because it casts doubt on the signaling (asymmetric information) hypothesis. That is, cash offers do not seem to be valued by the market as a means of reducing this uncertainty. Something else, such as the tax implication differences between cash and stock offers, drives cash target firms to demand larger payments from bidding firms.     

Explaining M&A Success in European Banks

We study 98 large M&As of European bidding banks from 1985 to 2000 in order to investigate drivers of excess returns to the shareholders of the targets, the bidders, and to the combined entity of the bidder and the target. Our findings show that many of 13 drivers identified mostly from prior, US‐focused research have significant explanatory power, indicating that the stock market reaction to M&A announcements of European bidding banks can be at least partly forecast. Our results are largely consistent with the US‐experience and confirm the preference of stock markets for focused transactions and against diversification. Moreover, we find that less active bidders create more value than more active/experienced bidders. This stands in contrast to some US research and may indicate that managers of frequent European bidding banks may be motivated by other objectives than creating shareholder value.     

Separation of Ownership from Control and Acquiring Firm Performance: The Case of Family Ownership in Canada

Abstract:   This study investigates the relationship between ownership structure and acquiring firm performance. A large proportion of Canadian public companies have controlling shareholders (families) that often exercise control over voting rights while holding a small fraction of the cash flow rights. This is achieved through the concurrent use of dual class voting shares and stock pyramids. Many suggest that these ownership structures involve larger agency costs than those imposed by dispersed ownership structures and that they distort corporate decisions with respect to investment choices such as acquisitions. We find that average acquiring firm announcement period abnormal returns for our sample of 327 Canadian transactions are positive over the 1998–2002 period. Cash deals, acquisitions of unlisted targets and cross‐border deals have a positive impact on value creation. Governance mechanisms (outside block‐holders, unrelated directors and small board size) also have a positive influence on the acquiring firm performance. Further, the positive abnormal returns are greater for family firms. We do not find that separation of ownership and control has a negative impact on performance. These results suggest that, contrary to other jurisdictions offering poor minority shareholder protection or poor corporate governance, separation of control and ownership is not viewed as leading to value destroying mergers and acquisitions, i.e., market participants do not perceive families as using M&A to obtain private benefits at the expense of minority shareholders. We do find a non‐monotonic relationship between ownership level and acquiring firm abnormal returns. Ownership of a majority of the cash flow rights has a negative impact on announcement returns. This is consistent with the view that large shareholders may undertake less risky projects as their wealth invested in the firm increases.     

A Model of an Oligopoly in an Insurance Market

This article analyzes the behavior of an oligopoly of risk-averse insurers that insure many consumers facing identical independent risks; however, the probability of a loss is ex ante not known with certainty. It is shown that there is a continuum of equilibria in the Bertrand game. The most plausible equilibrium can be obtained by requiring that all insurers are content with the number of policies they sell given the equilibrium premium.     

Linear beta pricing with inefficient benchmarks in a given factor structure*

ABSTRACT

We show the equivalence between the zero-beta version of a multi-factor arbitrage pricing model and a linear pricing model utilizing undiversified inefficient benchmarks in a given factor structure. The resulting linear model is a two-beta model, with one beta related to the inefficient benchmark and another adjusting for its inefficiency. This linear model shows that there are only two distinctive and computable sources of risk, affecting security expected returns, despite the existence of several risk factors. In a short empirical example we demonstrate that the model can be employed to provide guidance and allow researchers to test for the validity of their selection of the underlying risk factors driving variations in security returns.     

Strategic Environmental Policy and International Trade in Asymmetric Oligopoly Markets

This paper examines optimal cooperative and non-cooperative environmental taxes for the case in which a polluting input is used to produce an internationally-traded finished product. The model allows for terms-of-trade effects under oligopoly and employs a general specification of the environmental damage function that encompasses special cases of local, global, and transboundary externalities. The model has several implications for public finance. For example, inefficiently high environmental taxes may be optimal for a net exporting country in non-cooperative circumstances, as the motive to shift rent by selecting an inefficiently low tax rate is countervailed by the incentive to shift the burden of the tax to foreign consumers. The findings identify the important role of asymmetric trade flows (denominated in both goods and pollution exchange) in determining optimal cooperative and non-cooperative tax policy under oligopoly.     

Bank deregulation is better than mergers

The effects of mergers on bank costs, prices, profits, and market competition are compared with the effects from concurrent deregulation of branching restrictions. The title states our conclusion: deregulation has been better than mergers in Spain. Even so, improved post-deregulation economic conditions accounted for most of the improvement in costs and profits while deregulation had its greatest impact on improving competition. Analysis indicates that direct measures of market competition—rate spread, mark-up, and Lerner index—are more informative than the standard profit–structure relationship.     

The Effects of Dynamic Changes in Bank Competition on the Supply of Small Business Credit

We study the effects of structural changes in banking markets on the supply of credit to small businesses. Specifically, we examine whether bank mergers and acquisitions (M & As) and entry have ``external' effects on small business loans by other banks in the same local markets. The results suggest modest positive external effects from these dynamic changes in competition, except that large banks may reduce small business lending in reaction to entry. We confirm bank size and age as important determinants of this lending, and show that the measured age effect does not appear to be driven by local market M & A activity.     

从供给视角看我国房地产市场的“两难困境”

本文通过理论模型解释我国房地产市场两难困境的内在机制,提出各参与主体的博弈行为与房地产泡沫的制度逻辑:一方面地方政府土地出让和开发商的垄断造成房价过高;另一方面地方政府投资又依赖于土地出让收入。中央政府面临两者之间的权衡。本文提出,地方政府的利益是地价和房价上涨的根本原因,开发商垄断是高地价和高房价的直接原因。我们认为,大力建设保障性住房,并发展高端房市场是解决房地产市场两难处境的有效手段。     

Competitive Effects of Disclosure in a Strategic Entry Model

We investigate the welfare consequences of incumbent firms' mutual disclosure of cost information when there is a threat of entry from a firm not required to disclose its private cost information. New effects of disclosure are observed relative to no-entry models, with the result that incumbents' expected output is a decreasing function of the disclosure level. However, further analysis shows that increased disclosure usually increases incumbent expected profits and decreases expected consumer surplus, despite the additional entry effect of disclosure. Such analytical derivations provide objective input to the FASB as they attempt to predict the competitive effects of changing mandated disclosure requirements.     

Transportation rates and plant location in oligopolistic competition with sequential entry

This paper examines the impact of quantity-discounted transportation rates on location patterns of oligopolistic competition with sequential entry. When transportation rates are constant, Hwang and Mai (1990) show that the entrant locates at the same point as the existing firms if the production function exhibits constant returns to scale. The entrant will locate farther away from (closer to) the market than the existing firms do if the production function exhibits increasing (decreasing) returns to scale. This paper shows that Hwang and Mai's results need not hold when transportation rates are a function of quantity shipped and distance traveled.     

Modeling Asset Premiums and the Riskfree Rate in General Equilibrium CCAPM

We elaborate on the consumption capital asset pricing model (CCAPM) to reveal a set of underlying forces that determine asset returns. We use generalized preferences, allow for labor-leisure choice, a broad asset portfolio, and holding international claims. A calibration of the model with US data learns that excess stock and bond returns can be replicated. At the same time, however, the riskfree interest rate generally appears to be mispriced, consistent with Weil (1989). Additional results show that in general two optimal values of the intertemporal substitution parameter correspond with a specified coefficient of risk aversion. Tests that assess the dynamic properties of the model yield mixed results, but are most favorable when home bias is allowed.