One simple question - why people buy houses - is perhaps one of the most recurring and intriguing themes on research surface in housing. In the US, nearly two-thirds of the population owns houses (Tracy and Schneider (2001)). Optimal decision-making entails efficient risk management or hedging...

Given a firm's investment policy, its dividend policy is irrelevant (Miller and Modigliani (1961)). REITs, by law, pay at least 90 percent of their corporate income into dividends so their dividend policy is given. This is flipping of the dividend irrelevance theorem. Such a high dividend...