The Determinants of the Debt Maturity Decision for Real Estate Investment Trusts

This research uses the maturity of incremental bond issues and the weighted-average maturity of all outstanding debt and tests various theories from the corporate debt maturity literature to discover if real estate investment trust (REIT) debt maturity is influenced by liquidity risk, asymmetric information, personal taxes, and agency problems. The findings reveal that there is little to no evidence for the liquidity and asymmetric information hypotheses; however, there is evidence that personal taxes influence the maturity of REIT incremental debt issues, and agency problems play a role in determining the incremental and average debt maturity of REITs

A collection of essays in empirical finance

This dissertation consists of three papers. The first assesses the ability of bivariate distribution models to explain the contemporaneous and autocorrelation between volume and volatility. GMM is used to fit first and second moments of the model to the data and analyze the model's fit. The second paper looks at the uncertainty surrounding cost recovery in regulated utilities. Stock market data is used to ascertain the market's perception about the deregulation of electricity in the United States. The third and final paper looks at the economic evidence for a stochastic opportunity set from an investor's point of view. A Bayesian investor must allocate her wealth between a risky and a risk free asset after observing market data when the model for asset returns is unknown and returns are potentially predictable

Strategic alliances by financial services firms

We examine a sample of strategic alliances made by financial services firms during 1986 to 2003. The market reacts positively to the announcements of alliances and seems to incorporate the information about the value of alliances at the time of alliance announcements. We find no evidence of abnormal stock performance after announcements. Our results also suggest that strategic alliances usually are used as a final form of cooperation rather than as a first step towards closer cooperation between firms. For instance, only about 5% of alliances are followed with joint ventures or mergers of partner firms. Nevertheless, strategic alliance firms are more likely to form joint ventures or merge than randomly selected and matched firms. Furthermore, the market reacts more favorably to the alliance announcements by firms that are subsequently acquired by the alliance partners.Strategic alliances Financial services Joint ventures Mergers and acquisitions

An examination of IPO secondary market returns

IPO stock prices increased approximately 2.3% on the first day of secondary market trading over the period 1993 through 2003. While these aftermarket returns are accentuated during 1999 and 2000, they persist after the bubble burst and even increase as a percentage of total underpricing. We explore several non-mutually exclusive hypotheses to explain our findings including price support, laddering, retail sentiment, and information asymmetry. Our results are most consistent with the view that higher secondary market returns accrue to IPOs with more information asymmetries possibly due to price and aggregate demand uncertainty.IPO secondary returns Underpricing Partial adjustment Sentiment investors Aggregate demand uncertainty

The Effect of Reputation and Competition on the Advice of Real Estate Agents

Bargaining game, Real estate agent, Reputation,