Nils Kok

From Wall Street to Main Street: How Corporate Diversity Shapes Cities

with Avis Devine and Erkan Yonder, Working Paper (2022)

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The real estate industry is traditionally considered a male-dominated industry. At the same time, the industry shapes the quantity and quality of space in U.S. cities. In this paper, we study the impact of board gender diversity on the risk management decisions of 180 U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) during the 2001 to 2018 period. Using a bottom-up analysis on the properties in REIT portfolios, we find significant risk-reduction benefits associated with gender diversity, documenting that more gender-diverse REITs are more actively investing in environmentally-sustainable real estate. In addition, female CEOs are less overconfident than their male counterparts, leading to less active trading and a longer hold period of assets. Finally, more gender-diverse REITs are less geographically diversified, focusing capital allocations on a smaller number of states and cities. We conclude that diversity in real estate firms on Wall Street has real-life implications for Main Street, which is important given the growth of REITs and private equity real estate firms.

Value Added From Money Managers in Private Markets? An Examination of Pension Fund Investments in Real Estate

with Aleksandar Andonov and Piet Eichholtz (2012)

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Real estate is the most significant alternative asset class for pension funds, representing more than five percent of total holdings, on average. This paper employs a previously unexplored database to examine the investments of some 880 pension funds in direct real estate and real estate investment trusts (REITs) over the 1990-2009 period. Regarding allocation choice, we document that larger pension funds are more likely to invest in real estate internally, have lower costs, and higher net returns. Smaller funds are more likely to invest in direct real estate through external managers and fund-of-funds, but largely ignore REITs. The additional investment layers significantly increase their costs and disproportionally reduce returns. Moreover, U.S. pension funds’ investment costs are twice as high as those of their foreign peers, and both gross and net performance are lower. The underperformance of U.S. pension funds in real estate investments is most striking in the last two years of the sample period, which may be due to opportunistic investment behavior pre-crisis. The Performance of Pension Funds Investments in Real Estate View more presentations from nilskok

‘How Does the Market for Corporate Control Work for Property Companies?’

with Piet Eichholtz, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2008, 36(2)	Download
We investigate 95 takeovers of property companies all over the world and find that only two of those are hostile. To determine the effectiveness of the market for corporate control...	More information

‘Executive Compensation in UK Property Companies’

with Piet Eichholtz and Roger Otten, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2008, 36(4)	Download
We study the drivers of executive compensation in the listed UK property sector. The UK provides an excellent opportunity to analyze executive compensation due to high transparency in the different components of executive compensation...	More information

‘Corporate Governance and Performance: The REIT Effect’

with Rob Bauer and Piet Eichholtz, Real Estate Economics, 2010, 31(1)	Download
Real estate investment trusts (REITs) offer a natural experiment in corporate governance due to the fact that they leave little free cash flow for management, which reduces agency problems...	More information