Risk and return of open-end real estate funds : the German case

Open-end real estate funds (so called “Offene Immobilienfonds”) play a major role in the German market for securitised real estate investments. Such funds are pools of money from many investors, which are invested in real estate by special investment management companies. This study seeks to identify the risk and return profile of this investment vehicle (before and after income taxes), to compare them with those of other major asset classes, and to provide implications for their appropriate role in a mixed-asset portfolio. Addition-ally, an overview of the institutional architecture and role of German open-end real estate funds is given. Empirical evidence suggests that the financial characteristics of open-end real estate funds are in many respects similar to those reported for direct real estate invest-ments. Accordingly, German open-end real estate funds qualify for medium and long-term investment horizons, rather than for shorter holding periods

Knowledge Base Maintenance and Consistency Checking in MOLTKE

This paper deals with special problems of knowledge base maintenance which have to be solved within the knowledge acquisition process. We illustrate that aspects of maintenance must be taken into account by the design model construction because dependencies between pieces of knowledge can result in inconsistent states of a knowledge base. We describe a Knowledge Dependency Network which extends ideas from truth maintenance systems to detect and manage these inconsistencies. The network allows formal definitions of inconsistency conditions and checks them automatically preserving the integrity of the knowledge base. As a fundamental part of the acquisition and maintenance environment the knowledge dependency network supports the conventional development and editing of a knowledge base

ESTIMATING THE COST OF FOOD SAFETY REGULATION TO THE NEW ZEALAND SEAFOOD INDUSTRY

In New Zealand, the Animal Products Act 1999 requires all animal product processing businesses to have a HACCP-based risk management program by the end of 2002. This paper attempts to measure the effects of such regulation on the variable cost of production of the New Zealand seafood industry. Using the framework developed by Antle (2000), a model of quality-adjusted translog cost function is estimated using census of production data from 1929 to 1998. Our results show that variable costs could increase from 2% to 22% or from 2 cents to 19 cents per kilogram.HACCP, compliance costs, seafood, Production Economics,

Multiple Knowledge Acquisition Strategies in MOLTKE

In this paper we will present a design model (in the sense of KADS) for the domain of technical diagnosis. Based on this we will describe the fully implemented expert system shell MOLTKE 3.0, which integrates common knowledge acquisition methods with techniques developed in the fields of Model-Based Diagnosis and Machine Learning, especially Case-Based Reasoning