What's in a name? Definitions and conceptualisations of teleworking and homeworking

Interest in paid work performed in the home increasingly focuses on the concept of telework but debate over definitions continues. This paper discusses aspects of this debate and argues that project-specific definitions are useful and inevitable. The assertion that a single definition should be used by all research in this area is challenged.     

Investment decision-making under economic policy uncertainty

It is widely established that economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects investment decisions and performance, yet research in this area has overlooked the direct property investment market. This article seeks to rectify this and proposes a multistage multilevel analytical framework to offer new insights and a richness of findings. Using a news-based measure of EPU in the United Kingdom, and controlling for economic conditions, a national-level analysis reveals some evidence of Granger-Causality between EPU and total returns, indicating that pricing is responsive to uncertainty. These findings suggest that EPU is an important risk factor for direct property investments, with pricing implications. Differences in data and performance measure are important, however, with income returns unresponsive. A micro-level investigation begins to reveal some of the asset-pricing decisions underpinning the national results, indicating investors’ concerns for income streams are consistently high, regardless of varying EPU. Pricing can also cause changes in EPU, such as in the retail and industrial markets (increasingly linked through logistics) reflecting sector-specific stakeholder groups and newsworthy issues. This evidence highlights how important it is for policy-makers to understand the complex and bi-directional relationship, that indecision can undermine investment confidence and cause investment market volatility, in turn raising EPU.     

Perceptions and attitudes following a terrorist shock: Evidence from the UK

Transnational terrorism in Western countries has raised questions about security measures that constrain civil liberties. This is the first paper that uses a terrorist attack, that in the London 7/7/2005, as an exogenous source of variation to study the dynamics of risk perception and the effect on the readiness to trade off civil liberties for enhanced security. In this framework we show that willingness to trade off security for liberties is dramatically affected by changes in individual risk assessments due to a terrorist attack. We document the extent of persistence of changed attitudes.     

Refining the real estate pricing model

Investment theory dictates that capitalisation (cap) rates for freehold real estate should be determined by the risk-free nominal rate of return plus the risk premium (RP) less the expected growth rate, with an allowance for depreciation. However, importing the concept of the RP from the capital markets fails to guide investors through the complexities of the asset, or enable exploration of purchaser preferences and behaviour. A refined pricing model for real estate is proposed, based on a concept termed a risk scale, to distinguish between macro (market) and micro (stock) determinants of risk and growth within the RP. This pricing model is estimated for a major global investment market, using a cross-sectional inter-temporal framework, with a data-set of 497 transactions in the London office sector over 2010 Q2–2012 Q3. Average cap rates are estimated at just over 5%, with asset-specific attributes dominating yield determination, with submarket quality and tenant covenant most important; and unexpired term insignificant, surprising during the ‘flight to safety’ characterising the period. International investors bought at lower cap rates, despite the ongoing economic and financial instability of the study period. Improving understanding of pricing behaviour and market transparency is important and may be advanced through the pricing model.