Evidence of cycles in European commercial real estate markets and some hypotheses

In this paper, we seek to achieve four objectives. First, we provide some contextual material concerning the performance of the UK real estate market relative to stocks and bonds over a long period. Second, we provide UK – and some non-UK European - evidence of the tendency for property demand, supply, prices and returns to fluctuate around their long term trends or averages. Third, we briefly examine some hypotheses which suggest institutional contributions to property cycles in European markets. Fourth, we suggest some reasons why the future may not be as cyclical as the past

Conformal Killing spinors and special geometric structures in Lorentzian geometry - a survey

This paper is a survey on special geometric structures that admit conformal Killing spinors based on lectures, given at the ``Workshop on Special Geometric Structures in String Theory'', Bonn, September 2001 and at ESI, Wien, November 2001. We discuss the case of Lorentzian signature and explain which geometries occur up to dimension 6.Comment: Latex2.09, 13 page

Judicial Specialization and the Adjudication of Immigration Cases

When scholars and policymakers consider proposals for specialized courts, they are usually and appropriately mindful of the potential effects of specialization on the adjudication of cases. Focusing on the immigration field, this Article considers these potential effects in relation to other attributes of adjudication: the difficulty of cases, the severe caseload pressures, and the strong hierarchical controls that are each important attributes at some or all levels of the adjudication system. Specifically, this Article discusses the effects of those attributes, the effects of judicial specialization, and the intertwining of the two. It applies that analysis to proposals to substitute some type of specialized court for the federal courts of appeals in the adjudication of immigration cases. The Article concludes that the impact of adopting such a proposal could be substantial but that it is also quite uncertain. To a considerable degree, the impact depends on the form of specialization adopted and on other provisions of the legislation that creates a specialized court

Higher Education Earnings Premium: Value, Variation, and Trends

Overall, people with a college education do better in the labor market than people with no education beyond high school. Higher levels of education correspond, on average, to higher levels of employment and higher wages. Yet, as college prices rise and as examples of graduates struggling to find remunerative employment despite their credentials become more visible, both potential students and the general public are questioning the value of a college education. The data, however, remain clear: even at current prices, postsecondary education pays off for most people. Promising occupational and personal opportunities are disproportionately available to college graduates. It is increasingly difficult to maintain a middle class lifestyle without a postsecondary credential, and the economic, social, and civic benefits of a more educated population are well documented. Outcomes do vary considerably, however, both among people with similar levels of education and across types of credentials. Growing income inequality does not just involve a growing gap between the earnings of the most educated and the least educated people; there is also increasing variation within educational categories. Greater understanding of these patterns and of the changes over time in the earnings premium for different levels of education can add perspective to discussions of the importance of increased educational attainment for both individuals and society as a whole. This brief highlights some of the complexities underlying discussions of the return to the investment in postsecondary education and describes some of the variation in outcomes that leads to the prevalent uncertainty about the value of the investment, clarifying that disappointing outcomes for some are not inconsistent with a high average payoff and significant benefits for most student

Assisted Living for Our Parents: A Son’s Journey

[Excerpt] I wrote this book to help aging parents and their adult children understand the problems and risks in choosing an ALF, with the hope that they might avoid some of the experiences my mother and I had. My story echoes many other people\u27s stories. But of course I don\u27t pretend that what I will describe happens to everyone entering an ALF

Unlisted Property Funds and the Emerging Property Markets

This paper sets out to describe the changing nature of global property investment, to provide background information regarding the nature of unlisted property funds and their managers and investors, and especially the role played by unlisted property funds in facilitating cross-border investing. In particular, it focuses on the development of unlisted funds as intermediary structures carrying institutional capital from developed to developing markets. It presents the results of new research by UK research firm Property Funds Research (PFR) and the University of Reading which explores the extent to which this new vehicle has been effective in delivering capital to emerging markets. The research relates the number of funds targetting particular countries and to population and GDP per capita. It finds that there is a very strong relationship between the popularity of a country for investment through this vehicle format and these independent variables. More interesting, perhaps, is the identification of outlier countries where the amount of investment is significantly less - or greater - than that predicted by population and GDP per capita.unlisted property funds, developing and emerging markets