Tjeerd Boonman, Ph.D., McMullen Family Professor in Economics and assistant professor in the department of Economics, Finance, and Real Estate, recently received the Best Paper Award from the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management. The award was presented at the annual American Real Estate Society Conference held in Sandestin, Florida.
The award-winning paper, “Drivers of U.S. REIT returns and their volatilities: a Bayesian Model Averaging Approach,” was co-authored with Vivek Sah, Ph.D., from the University of Denver, and Tom Geurts, Ph.D., from Bucknell University, and analyzes what drives returns and volatilities in U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).
“We find that returns are mostly driven by domestic financial markets indicators, and the volatility of the returns by REIT-specific indicators,” Boonman said. “Furthermore, we find that the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) had a disruptive impact on both the returns and volatilities. Actually, the GFC was found to be more disruptive than the COVID-19 crisis.”
The Best Paper Award is presented annually to one published paper and selected by members of the American Real Estate Society (ARES).
Reflecting on the process, Boonman said, “In the summer of 2021, I received a research grant from the Monmouth University Leon Hess Business Council, which enabled me to dedicate the summer to research. I spent hundreds of hours on collecting and processing data, writing and rewriting. Former Monmouth University student Swati Patil was very valuable as research assistant. It has been a long ride but has given a lot of satisfaction too.”
ARES is an association of real estate thought leaders drawn from academia and the profession at large. The Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Managementis a Taylor & Francis publication of ARES promoting and disseminating high-quality research that advances knowledge and understanding in the fields of real estate investments and finance, spanning commercial and residential real estate markets and is ranked as a B journal by the Australian Business Deans Council.