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(1 - 6 of 6)
- Title
- Real Estate Investment Trust Performance, Efficiency and Internationalization.
- Creator
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Harris, Joshua, Anderson, Randy, Schnitzlein, Charles, Turnbull, Geoffrey, Rottke, Nico, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are firms that own and manage income producing commercial real estate for the benefit of their shareholders. The three studies in this dissertation explore topics relating to best practices of REIT management and portfolio composition. Managers and investors can use the findings herein to aide in analyzing a REIT's performance and determining optimal investment policies. Utilizing REIT from SNL Real Estate and CRSP, the first two studies examine the role...
Show moreReal Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are firms that own and manage income producing commercial real estate for the benefit of their shareholders. The three studies in this dissertation explore topics relating to best practices of REIT management and portfolio composition. Managers and investors can use the findings herein to aide in analyzing a REIT's performance and determining optimal investment policies. Utilizing REIT from SNL Real Estate and CRSP, the first two studies examine the role of international diversification upon performance, technical efficiency, and scale efficiency. The third study utilizes REIT data to examine technical and scale efficiency over a 21 year window and investigates characteristics of the REITs that affect the levels of efficiency. CHAPTER 1 (-) PROFITABILITY OF REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST INTERNATIONALIZATIONReal Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) in the United States have grown extremely fast in terms of assets and market capitalization since the early 1990's. As with many industries, U.S. REITs began acquiring foreign properties as their size grew and they needed to seek new investment opportunities. This paper investigates the role of holding foreign assets upon the total return of U.S. based REITs from 1995 through 2010. We find that holding foreign properties in associated with negative relative performance when risk, size, and other common market factors are controlled for. Interestingly, the source of the negative performance is not related to the two largest areas for foreign investment, Europe and Canada. Instead, the negative performance is detected when a REIT begins acquiring properties in other global regions such as Latin America and Asia/Pacific. This paper has broad ramifications for REIT investors and managers alike.CHAPTER 2 (-) EFFECT OF INTERNATIONAL DIVERSIFICATION BY U.S. REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUSTS ON COST EFFICIENCY AND SCALEAs U.S. based Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have increased their degree and type of holdings overseas, there has yet to a study that has investigated such activity on the REIT's measures of cost efficiency and scale. Using data from 2010, Data Envelopment Analysis techniques are used to estimate measures of technical and scale efficiency that are then regressed against measures of international diversification and other controls to measure the impact of this global expansion. It is determined that REITs with foreign holdings are significantly larger than domestic REITs and are correspondingly 96% of foreign investing REITs are operating at decreasing returns to scale. Further almost every measure of foreign diversification is negative and significantly impacting scale efficiency. However, simply being a REIT with foreign holdings did positively and significantly associate with higher levels of technical efficiencies. Thus REITs that expand globally may have some advantages in operational efficiency but lose considerably in terms of scale efficiency by increasing their size as they move cross-border. ?CHAPTER 3 (-) THE EVOLUTION OF TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY AND ECONOMIES OF SCALE OF REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUSTSData Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to measure technical and scale efficiency of 21 years of Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) data. This is the longest, most complete dataset ever analyzed in the REIT efficiency literature and as such makes a significant contribution as prior efficiency studies' data windows end in the early 2000's at latest. Overall, REITs appear to continue to operate at decreasing returns to scale despite rapid growth in total assets. Further, there is some evidence of improving technical efficiency overtime; however the finding is not strong. In summation, it appears that REITs have not improved on a relative basis despite the rapid growth, a finding that suggests a potential of a high degree of firm competition in the REIT industry. Finally, firm characteristics such as debt utilization, management and advisory structure, and property type specialization are tested for their impact upon technical and scale efficiency.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- CFE0004383, ucf:49399
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004383
- Title
- Three essays on the compensation, structure, and decision making of the board of directors.
- Creator
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Pham, Duong, Frye, Melissa, Turnbull, Geoffrey, Gatchev, Vladimir, Farrell, Kathleen, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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My first essay examines compensation of newly formed boards of directors following tax-free corporate spin-offs. The empirical results show newly formed spin-off boards are paid significantly more than peer boards in the same industry with similar firm size. Higher compensation is observed for spin-off firms where the CEOs are not formerly employed by the parent firms but not for spin-off firms with parent related CEOs, indicating that new directors demand higher compensation for the work...
Show moreMy first essay examines compensation of newly formed boards of directors following tax-free corporate spin-offs. The empirical results show newly formed spin-off boards are paid significantly more than peer boards in the same industry with similar firm size. Higher compensation is observed for spin-off firms where the CEOs are not formerly employed by the parent firms but not for spin-off firms with parent related CEOs, indicating that new directors demand higher compensation for the work involved in setting up the new governing system for the spun-off firms especially when there is a brand new CEO managing the spinoff firm. Differences in the structure of director compensation are consistent with better incentive alignment for the newly formed spinoff boards who have the rare opportunity to design their compensation from scratch. The paper also finds evidence that limited CEO's influence on the composition of the spinoff board leads to weaker cronyism between the board and the CEO of spinoff firms.My second essay explores the role CEO gender plays in shaping the board of directors. The literature provides strong evidence that male CEOs are more overconfident than female CEOs. I contend that a male CEO, who may overestimate his ability and/or underestimate the monitoring role of the board, will prefer to exert as much control over the board as possible and thus prefer a weaker board. I find consistent results that new male CEOs are more likely to increase board size, decrease board independence, reduce board gender diversification, have worse director attendance and have lower overall board monitoring. In contrast, new female CEOs have more gender diversified boards and are associated with an increase in overall board monitoring intensity. I also find supporting evidence in terms of CEO compensation, where new male CEOs gain more control and are compensated more in both total compensation and equity compensation post transition, consistent with what we expect from a weaker board.iiiMy third essay examines CEO's influence on the board of directors in spinoff firms. CEO's influence on the board of directors has been the main concern for shareholders who entrust the firm board with the task of monitoring the firm CEOs. Current literature shows that the more powerful the CEO, the better he is able to extract rents via his compensation at the expense of shareholders. In this study, I utilize a sample of spinoff firms that need to form a brand new board of directors from scratch to shed more lights on the CEO influence question. Particularly, I hypothesize and find that since spinoff CEOs appointed from the parent firm have more influence over the selection of spinoff directors, they enjoy higher compensation with lower pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) and have lower turnover-performance sensitivity than CEOs at similar non-spinoff firms. In contrast, spinoff CEOs hired from outside the pre-spinoff business have similar compensation, PPS and turnover-performance sensitivity to their peers. The results provide supporting evidence for the CEO influence hypothesis and show that limiting CEO's involvement in the selection of directors might help mitigate subsequent CEO rent seeking behavior.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017
- Identifier
- CFE0006639, ucf:51245
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006639
- Title
- Three Essays on Compensation and the Board of Directors.
- Creator
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Cherry, Ian, Gatchev, Vladimir, Turnbull, Geoffrey, Schnitzlein, Charles, Roberts, Robin, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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In my first essay, I find a statistically and economically significant director-specific component in CEO pay following the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). In the cross-section of firms, directors that award relatively higher (lower) CEO pay in one firm also award relatively higher (lower) CEO pay in other firms of whose boards they are members during the year. Based on my estimates, the director-specific component is responsible for around (&)#177;3.5% of total CEO pay or...
Show moreIn my first essay, I find a statistically and economically significant director-specific component in CEO pay following the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). In the cross-section of firms, directors that award relatively higher (lower) CEO pay in one firm also award relatively higher (lower) CEO pay in other firms of whose boards they are members during the year. Based on my estimates, the director-specific component is responsible for around (&)#177;3.5% of total CEO pay or around (&)#177;$230,000 per CEO-year on average. In addition to affecting CEO pay levels, the director-specific component also has a significant effect on the changes and the composition of CEO pay, thus affecting CEO incentives. I pursue two potential explanations for our findings(-)changes in board composition and changes in director behavior after SOX. I do not find evidence that the director-specific component in CEO pay is due to changes in board composition. Instead, I find evidence that the director-specific component in CEO pay is due to changes in director behavior related to the additional risks and employment concerns imposed on directors after SOX. My findings are consistent with the view that SOX discourages directors from taking risks when awarding CEO pay and so directors award CEO pay that they can more easily justify through direct experiences in other firms. These findings have wide implications about the importance of directors in setting CEO pay, the existence of agency problems within the board, and the consequences of regulation in general and SOX in particular.My second essay concerns the compensation of directors themselves. I find that institutional ownership is positively related to the level of director compensation and the proportion of equity based compensation that directors receive. These results are consistent with the interpretation that institutions prefer stronger links between firm performance and board compensation and are willing to pay higher levels of compensation for better governance. I also investigate the difference between the effects of active versus passive institutional investment and find that active institutions appear to have a larger economic impact on director compensation. However, I do not find a statistical difference between the effects of active and passive ownership.My third essay studies the strategies that firms follow when apportioning incentive compensation within the board of directors. Firms tend to preserve the structure of director incentives over time so that firms using equal (variable) incentives in one year are more likely to use equal (variable) incentives in the following year. I further examine whether the structure of director incentives within the board affects acquirer performance in corporate acquisitions. I find that the five-day announcement returns of firms awarding equal director incentives are around 1% higher than the returns of firms that award variable director incentives within the board. These results are robust to standard controls related to acquirer returns, to different lengths of the announcement window, and to alternative incentive strategy classification schemes. Overall, my findings are consistent with the idea that director incentives play a significant role in corporate performance and with the idea that equal director incentives dominate variable incentives in circumstances where the success of the outcome is likely to depend on the board as a whole.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0005588, ucf:50265
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005588
- Title
- Three Essays on Asset Pricing in Security and Housing Markets.
- Creator
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Zheng, Minrong, Chen, Honghui, Turnbull, Geoffrey, Frye, Melissa, Zahirovic-Herbert, Velma, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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In my first essay, I investigate the relationship between IPO long-run underperformance (Ritter, 1991) and the idiosyncratic risk puzzle (Ang, Hodrick, Xing and Zhang, 2006), the phenomenon of abnormally low returns for stocks with high idiosyncratic risk. I show that IPO long-run underperformance is in fact a manifestation of the surprisingly low returns for high idiosyncratic risk stocks. IPO underperformance disappears after I control for the idiosyncratic risk. Specifically, the...
Show moreIn my first essay, I investigate the relationship between IPO long-run underperformance (Ritter, 1991) and the idiosyncratic risk puzzle (Ang, Hodrick, Xing and Zhang, 2006), the phenomenon of abnormally low returns for stocks with high idiosyncratic risk. I show that IPO long-run underperformance is in fact a manifestation of the surprisingly low returns for high idiosyncratic risk stocks. IPO underperformance disappears after I control for the idiosyncratic risk. Specifically, the underperformance of IPO firms only presents following the months in which they are classified into the highest idiosyncratic risk quintile. On the other hand, I find that the idiosyncratic risk puzzle is magnified by the IPO underperformance for two reasons. First, IPOs are over-represented in the highest volatility quintile. Second, while stocks in the highest volatility quintile underperform in general, the intra-quintile underperformance is substantially more severe for the IPO firms. My results are robust to different sample requirements. My second essay examines school quality and quality risk capitalization when school quality is uncertain, taking into account uncertainty induced by low signal content in quality measures available to parents or stochastic quality outcomes. Extending the residential bid rent theory to the uncertainty environment, the theory shows that greater school quality increases housing prices steepens the price gradient, whereas the quality risk decreases the housing prices and flattens the price gradient. The empirical models incorporate two sources of quality risk, the variance in measured school quality and school attendance zone instability. Coupling an output based measure using the over-period average of school normalized math test scores based on the Orange County public elementary school average scores with an input based measure using student/teacher ratios provides quality measures that appear to correlate sufficiently with parents' perceptions of elementary school quality, but school peer effects play important role as well. Estimates reveal capitalization of quality and uncertainty that are consistent with theory as well as systematic patterns across housing market phases and neighborhood in income level. My third essay is a meta-analysis of the body of empirical results for school quality capitalization in house prices. One puzzling aspect of the housing markets literature is that, while public school quality is a major concern of many households, empirical studies of school quality capitalization into house prices yield mixed and sometimes inconsistent results not only across studies, but also within studies when using different school quality measures and models. These differences are reflected in the capitalization coefficient value, level of significance, and even direction of capitalization effects. This paper conducts meta-analysis of the school quality capitalization estimates to identify the factors contributing to this variation. It reveals that the way the school quality is measured matters. Peer effects measures yield less significant capitalization estimates than input and output based measures and value added measures exhibit lower significance than other output based measures. Moreover, both boundary fixed effects and neighborhood fixed effect approaches can effectively and significantly control for the influence of neighborhood amenities. Adding more school quality variables reduces the capitalization significance of individual school quality variables. The most unexpected finding is that school quality capitalization significance is much less in the South than in other regions. Also surprising is that econometric methods do not appear to be driving results.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016
- Identifier
- CFE0006518, ucf:51358
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006518
- Title
- Two Applications of Financial Economics to Real Estate.
- Creator
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Dibartolomeo, Jeffrey, Gatchev, Vladimir, Chen, Honghui, Turnbull, Geoffrey, Harrison, David, Schnitzlein, Charles, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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My first essay examines the effects of dividend policy on the liquidity risk of REITs. I argue that the mandatory high cash payouts of REITs reduce investor reliance on the stock market to satisfy their liquidity needs. Using a sample of equity REITs from 1980 through 2015, I find strong empirical evidence consistent with this paradigm. Unlike non-REIT property companies, I find REITs exhibit negative sensitivity to marketwide liquidity shocks; a result that is evident across most property...
Show moreMy first essay examines the effects of dividend policy on the liquidity risk of REITs. I argue that the mandatory high cash payouts of REITs reduce investor reliance on the stock market to satisfy their liquidity needs. Using a sample of equity REITs from 1980 through 2015, I find strong empirical evidence consistent with this paradigm. Unlike non-REIT property companies, I find REITs exhibit negative sensitivity to marketwide liquidity shocks; a result that is evident across most property type sectors. Moreover, while my findings are robust across a wide range of portfolios based on size, dividend frequency, leverage, market-to-book, operations type, and the presence of dividend reinvestment plans, smaller REITs mitigate liquidity risk only when their dividend frequency is relatively high. Finally, I find that price sensitivities to marketwide liquidity shocks increase after firms elect to discontinue REIT status. These findings strongly support the notions that investors view dividend payouts as a substitute for liquidity, and that REITs' relatively high mandated payout requirements benefit investors with reduced liquidity risk.My second essay re-examines the ability of the Mills-Muth neoclassical land use theory to explain urban sprawl. I test the robustness of Brueckner and Fansler's (1983) seminal study using data drawn from the 1970 U.S. Census. A repeated sampling test shows that their 1970 sampling methodology led to spurious estimates; their conclusions regarding the economic factors driving sprawl cannot be supported. Nor can they be supported using more recent data from the 2000 and 2010 Census. Given this, I offer two alternate measures of urban sprawl: the traditional population density gradient and a new measure that relaxes the monotonicity constraint implied by traditional density gradients. I find the factors identified by neoclassical theory better explain sprawl when using the density gradient and the non-monotonic measure than the Brueckner-Fansler approach.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2018
- Identifier
- CFE0006995, ucf:51619
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006995
- Title
- Two Essays on Investors' Attention to Economically Linked Firms.
- Creator
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Khoshnoud, Mahsa, Chen, Honghui, Frye, Melissa, Gatchev, Vladimir, Turnbull, Geoffrey, Harrison, David, Roberts, Robin, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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My first essay examines the degree to which the market prices of publicly traded firms reflect and respond to new information regarding the economic viability and vitality of organizations to which they are strategically linked. More specifically, I exploit the uniquely transparent nature of the lessor-lessee relationship across commercial real estate markets to evaluate whether future returns to real estate investment trusts (REITs) are systematically affected by the financial return...
Show moreMy first essay examines the degree to which the market prices of publicly traded firms reflect and respond to new information regarding the economic viability and vitality of organizations to which they are strategically linked. More specifically, I exploit the uniquely transparent nature of the lessor-lessee relationship across commercial real estate markets to evaluate whether future returns to real estate investment trusts (REITs) are systematically affected by the financial return performance and/or operational opacity of the tenants who lease their investment properties. Using a hand collected data set identifying the principal tenants of 96 publicly traded REITs, I find those firms with the best performing tenants generate annualized abnormal returns which are approximately six percent higher than those realized by REITs with the worst performing tenants. These results are robust to a variety of model specifications, and a closer inspection of the results reveals these performance differentials are consistent with emerging evidence across the literature suggesting investors' limited attention materially influences the return predictability of assets. With respect to the current investigation, I thus conclude investors' limited attention leads to the failure of REIT prices to fully reflect the valuation implications of their tenants' return performance.My second essay investigates how sophisticated investors, such as short sellers, trade on information along the supply chain. Short sellers are known to be generally better informed than common investors. Given the economic linkages that exist between the suppliers and customers, one would expect short sellers to trade on such information. My results indicate that short interest predicts unexpected earnings news, consistent with short sellers extracting information from economic relationships. When I evaluate stock return and short interests in regression analysis, I find strong negative relation between short interest in supplier firm and the future stock returns for the customer firm for the return in the next month. The negative relation persists for twelve months. I find similar results from portfolio approach. I argue that one plausible channel that explains the information content of supplier (customer) firm's short interest for the customer (supplier) firms is short sale constraints on the customer (supplier) firms. My results are consistent with this explanation. Overall, my findings suggest that short sellers play an important role in the price discovery of related firms on supply chain, beyond their direct effects documented previously.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017
- Identifier
- CFE0006755, ucf:51842
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006755
