Profitability of Office Rental Market in Seoul: An Application of Simultaneous Structural Equations

This article is concerned with the estimation of excess rates of return on the office rental market in Seoul using a simultaneous structural equation model. The office rental market in Seoul is spatially divided into CBD and non-CBD, and the model has three behavior equations of Chonsei price, monthly rent and key deposit, with two identity equations of conversion rate and excess rate of return. This article reveals that it would be rational for the owners to ask tenants for a higher deposit with a lower monthly rent under increasing interest rates because the interest rate has a positive effect on the Chonsei deposit and the key deposit, but a negative effect on the monthly rent. Although high nominal interest rate and low economic growth reduce the excess rate of return on both submarkets, the non-CBD office rental market would be more profitable than the CBD market despite lower levels of the monthly rent and key deposit.     

National Vacancy Rates and the Persistence of Shocks in U.S. Office Markets

In this paper, we develop and estimate a model that decomposes the variance in office vacancy rates into market-specific, time-specific, and random components. The results indicate significant differences in natural vacancy rates across markets. We also find some persistence in deviations from these natural vacancy rates. The analysis is applied to both central business district (CBD) and suburban office markets. We find that natural vacancy rates differ across CBD markets and across suburban markets. Further, the persistence of disequilibrium in one CBD market seems to differ significantly from that in another. This is not shown to be true for suburban markets.     

Transaction-Based Office Price Indexes: A Spatiotemporal Modeling Approach

This study examines the potential of a two-order spatiotemporal autoregressive model with a Bayesian heteroskedasticity robust procedure in modeling strata-titled Singapore office unit transaction prices and in constructing transaction-based disaggregate office price indexes. The model reduces the problems caused by the infrequent trading of individual commercial properties. However, for those office properties that are located outside the CBD and also for those less frequently transacted, the power of the model in capturing these particular office buildings' price dynamics is limited. The significant differences of the office prices across the various office buildings and submarkets show that the model can capture the variation in office prices and track the timing of capital gains and losses that investors may accrue on spatially distributed office properties more accurately than hedonic or weighted least squares estimates.     

Determinants of Location for General Purpose Office Firms within Medium Size Cities*

This study examines determinants of the downtown/non-downtown location choice for general purpose rental office users. It presents a model of location choice which accounts for linkages, personnel commuting costs and location of market centroid. It fits the model to survey data on office space usage, distinguishing between market oriented and non-market oriented firms. The study finds that market oriented firms are primarily sensitive to market location, while non-market oriented firms are more sensitive to linkages and personnel commuting costs. It also finds that linkages play a limited role in the location decisions even for non-market oriented offices because, in the medium size cities studied, few firms are linkage intensive.     

Rental Price Adjustment and Investment in the Office Market

This study presents estimates of the rental price adjustment mechanism and investment response in the office construction market using data from fourteen cities over the period 1979–1983. Market rents are seen to adjust in response to local as well as national economic conditions. Investment, as measured by building permits, responds strongly to rent in a two-stage regression model, as well as to the long-term growth rate of office employment. Tests for a cobweb-type overreaction by investors do not reveal any cyclical characteristics of the market, indicating that the effects of random demand shocks are not felt beyond the normal construction period.     

The Effect of Clustering on Office Rents: Evidence from the Amsterdam Market

This article examines the rent effects of office clustering in the Amsterdam office market for the period 2000–2005. We isolate the rent effects of location density based on geographic information system (GIS) methodology, while controlling for variations in object characteristics in a cross-sectional hedonic model. While controlling for the age, location and quality of the object, we find a strong positive effect of being located in dense office areas. We find that the vicinity of other office objects is priced into rent levels, regardless of market conditions. This article extends existing literature by examining the influence of clustering outside the United States, during changing economic tides and by application of novel methodology, based on objective clustering schemes, which can be replicated for other geographic areas.     

Office Rent Determinants in the Chicago Area

This paper analyzes 1990 office asking rents in the Chicago metropolitan area. It carefully specifies a measure of the present value of a lease, taking account of important properties of rent offers. This present value is the dependent variable in the statistical analysis. The sample data analyzed pertain to 543 offices that contain about 80% of the office space in the metropolitan area. The present value of asking rents is related to many building characteristics and to each building's location. The analysis demonstrates that asking rents depend on about fifteen characteristics of the building and on a careful specification of its location.     

The Cyclic Behavior of the National Office Market

A review of the post WWII data on national office building construction and vacancy, reveals a recurrent ten-twelve year cycle. Specifying and estimating a structural econometric model for these series leads to several conclusions about this commercial real estate sector. First, the office market appears to "clear" quite slowly, and long-run expectations play an important role in market behavior. Second, supply is definitely more responsive to market conditions than demand. Finally, a six-year forecast suggests that the current over-supply in the market will not go away as fast as in the past.     

Examining a key corporate role: The influence of capital allocation competency on business unit performance

Research on the role of the corporate office in firm performance has focused on establishing how much performance variance can be attributed to a “corporate effect,” with little attention devoted to understanding how this influence occurs. In this study, we model capital allocation competency as a dynamic managerial capability and find that lower levels of allocation competency in the form of excess investment to business units with relatively poorer future prospects reduce business unit performance. We also find that market conditions affect performance implications of capital allocation—allocation competency is more salient in more competitive markets. These results enhance our understanding of how the corporate office influences business unit performance through its role in allocating capital across business units. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Urban Homeowner's Residential Location Decision in an Asset-Pricing Context

Homeowners determine the maximum site bid price for homeowner housing within a two-period expected-utility model. The bid price is a function of the expected cash flows to sites, the quantity of housing consumed and a relocation option. The bid price is derived in the general case as a function of the homeowner's portfolio risk, including the total risk to the site, and the market price of risk. The bid price is derived under a spatial measure as a function of distance from an arbitrary location. Specific results are obtained when the household experiences log-linear utility for housing and other goods. Use of the market price of risk simplifies analytical solutions to the bid price equation.     

Toward a Model of the Office Building Sector

High rise office buildings represent large capital outlays in very competitive markets. Investment and development decisions require careful market analysis to assure sufficient demand to lease the office space at rental rates which will make the venture financially attractive. Present methodology for analyzing future commercial real estate market conditions can at best be said to be inadequate. This methodology relies on concepts such as "market absorption" rates and "normal" vacancy rates. These concepts usually rely on accounting type and trend line techniques to provide forecasts of space demand. In this paper we provide an alternative methodology for forecasting the key variables in the office space market by developing a statistical model of supply and demand. The key variables that need to be forecasted are the stock of office space (in square feet), the flow of new office construction (in square feet), the vacancy rate (in percent), and the rent for office space (net rent per square foot).     

On the comparative statics of the dominant-firm model

This paper examines the effect of a change in demand upon a dominant firm's share of the market. The direction of change in market share is not readily determined in the general form of the model. It depends upon the values of a number of parameters. In the linear and log-linear forms of the model, however, the number of crucial parameters reduces to two. The market share of the dominant firm varies directly (inversely) with demand when the y-intercept of its marginal cost curve is greater (less) than the y-intercept of the supply curve of the fringe in the linear model and, in the log-linear model, when the elasticity of marginal cost with respect to output is less (greater) for the dominant firm than it is for the fringe.     

Office Building Investment and the Macroeconomy: Empirical Evidence, 1973–1985

Given the recent concern about overbuilding in the office sector, this paper considers the influence that macroeconomic factors have upon office construction. Because office construction is volatile and because the "time to build" problem requires construction to change with a lag, the paper employs a different methodology, vector autoregressions, to model the office building sector. The findings indicate that anticipated output has a large and direct effect. This effect depends on the predictive content of nominal interest rates, suggesting that the declines in nominal rates over the past five years explains the recent overbuilding.     

Chicago's Office Market: Price Indices, Location and Time

Conventional wisdom holds that overbuilding and high vacancy, coupled with curtailed tax benefits, have led to reduced office property values since the late 1980s. Yet assertions that office real estate values fell between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s are not supported everywhere by convincing evidence. This study offers a hedonic analysis of Chicago area office properties that sold from 1986 through 1993. Whereas earlier office market studies generally have been based on rents, this study focuses on variation in actual sale prices (although the prices were not adjusted for financing differences). The transaction-based index estimated here does not support the existence of a nominal office property price level decline beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s. In fact, the results show an upward trend in office property values after 1986, with nominal declines in office market price levels occurring only in the latter portion of the study period.     

PRICES AND ENDOGENOUS MARKET STRUCTURE IN OFFICE SUPPLY SUPERSTORES*

We consider the relationship between prices and market structure for office supply superstores in the U.S. which was central to the Federal Trade Commission's opposition to the merger of Staples and Office Depot. Due to potential biases in a standard regression, we employ a two‐stage approach in which a model of endogenous market structure provides correction terms for a second stage price regression. Using a cross‐section of data on market structures and Staples' prices, we find that excluding the correction term substantially distorts the importance of competitors as the two‐stage model yields stronger negative relationships between prices and market structure variables.     

The Workings of the London Office Market

This paper presents estimates of an equilibrium-based dynamic adjustment model of the office market, using supply and demand relationships to link construction, absorption, vacancies and rents to employment growth and real interest rates. The model is estimated using data from the City of London office market over 1977–1996. The model tracks the market dynamically, and the severe 1985–1996 cycle is shown to be related to the cycle in employment growth and the movement of real interest rates. The latter directly affects both construction and real rent levels.     

Commercial Office Space: Testing the Implications of Real Options Models with Competitive Interactions

We test the implications of real option pricing models with competitive interactions for commercial real estate development. The competitive nature of a local commercial real estate market relies on a Herfindahl ratio derived from individual developers' shares of total office construction in their market. All else being equal, greater competition among local developers is associated with more building starts. Other variables suggested by the real options pricing model, including the volatility of local lease rates, are also found to be statistically important. In addition, we provide evidence consistent with greater competition attenuating the extent to which increases in volatility delay commercial real estate development.     

An Analysis of Office Market Rents: Some Empirical Evidence

This paper provides an empirical analysis of office building rents using data for a five-year period in a medium- sized city. The results indicate that rent levels respond to various factors in the expected manner: rents vary systematically across classes of buildings and locations, overall market conditions have a significant impact on rents, and contract variations are associated with rent differences. We also present the first evidence at the building level on the rent-vacancy adjustment process. The results show a significant relationship between rent changes and vacancies.     

农村劳动力市场发育对农村土地流转的影响分析——基于农户调查的实证研究

利用农户调查数据,运用多元回归模型实证分析了农村劳动力市场发育对农地流转的影响。模型估算结果表明：在表征农村劳动力市场发育程度的四个变量中,工资自主决定程度对农地转出率影响最大,回归系数达到了0.528,即该变量每增加一个单位将会使农地转出率增长52.8%。就业流动自由度对农地转出率的影响也比较大,回归系数为0.423。就业市场服务体系完善程度对农地转出率的影响相对较小,回归系数为0.126。在此基础上,得出相应的政策启示。     

Structure and Profitability in Banking Markets

We use the structure-performance model and regression analysis to investigate a number of analytical issues that often arise in evaluating competition in connection with bank mergers and that are generally relevant to mergers in other industries. Perhaps our most consistent and strongest finding is that the local market HHI is positively and significantly related to profitability. We also find that the number of organizations and the level of recent deposit growth may provide some additional information on the level of competition. Finally, several variables including market size, the number of large banking firms, deposits per office, and resident migration rates exhibit similar relationships to profitability in the bivariate analysis, suggesting that there may be some characteristic associated with market size, density, or attractiveness that is important for competition.