Investment in thinly-traded private assets involves liquidity risk. Existing literature provides limited guidance as it mainly focuses on publicly-traded security assets such as stocks and bonds. This paper develops an analytical tool for quantifying liquidity risk of private assets. Using...

This paper documents women on average pay more for mortgages than men. The disparity cannot be fully explained by traditional variables such as mortgage features, borrower characteristics, and market conditions. While the persistence of gender disparity may suggest discrimination, we offer a...

This paper comments on the Weighted Repeated Sales (WRS) method in Case and Shiller (1989). We find that Case-Shiller's model for step-two of WRS is conceptually mis-specified and empirically inaccurate, which are likely to cause the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices to be biased for the most...

Modern Portfolio Theory is a single-period model developed for the efficient securities market, in which asset prices are implicitly assumed to follow a random walk. It is widely agreed that real estate does not fit into the efficient market paradigm; however, mixed-asset portfolio analysis...

Thinly-traded assets exhibit illiquidity and do not fit in the efficient market paradigm. Direct application of classical finance theories to illiquid assets simply ignores the illiquidity risk of thinly-traded assets. Using commercial real estate as a testing ground, this paper develops a new,...

It is well documented in the literature that long-run asset prices do not follow the random walk, and their returns are not independent and identically-distributed (i.i.d.) over time. But how can this notion – long-run returns and volatilities being horizon dependent - be incorporated into...

This paper identifies a critical issue in the Weighted Repeated Sales (WRS) method – the omission of market risk in the weight estimation model specified by Case and Shiller (1989). It demonstrates that the omission of market risk is conceptually unjustified. Through extensive examination of...

Existing research on racial discrimination in mortgage lending has overwhelmingly focused on whether black applicants are more likely to be denied for credit than comparable white applicants. This study investigates whether the approved black applicants are likely charged higher interest rates...

Existing research on racial discrimination in mortgage lending has overwhelmingly focused on whether black applicants are more likely to be denied for credit than comparable white applicants. This study investigates whether the approved black applicants are likely charged higher interest rates...

Direct application of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) to the mixed-asset portfolio often suggests that allocation to real estate should be far more than what is practically acceptable. This paper reveals that the puzzling gap is caused by inappropriate application of MPT using only short-term...