Time and risk diversification in real estate investments: assessing the ex post economic value

Carolina Fugazza (), Massimo Guidolin and Giovanna Nicodano

No 2009-001, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: Welfare gains to long-horizon investors may derive from time diversification that exploits non-zero intertemporal return correlations associated with predictable returns. Real estate may thus become more desirable if its returns are negatively serially correlated. While it could be important for long horizon investors, time diversification has been mostly investigated in asset menus without real estate and focusing on in-sample experiments. This paper evaluates ex post, out-of-sample gains from diversification when E-REITs belong to the investment opportunity set. We find that diversification into REITs increases both the Sharpe ratio and the certainty equivalent of wealth for all investment horizons and for both Classical and Bayesian (who account for parameter uncertainty) investors. The increases in Sharpe ratios are often statistically significant. However, the out-of sample average Sharpe ratio and realized expected utility of long-horizon portfolios are frequently lower than that of a one-period portfolio, which casts doubts on the value of time diversification.

Keywords: real; estate; investments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Time and Risk Diversification in Real Estate Investments: Assessing the Ex Post Economic Value (2009)
Working Paper: Time and Risk Diversification in Real Estate Investments: Assessing the Ex Post Economic Value (2009)
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