A real estate investment trust (REIT) is an intermediary that passes its cash flows and income to its shareholders. Hence, the efficiency of a REIT in providing this service should affect shareholder value. Using a sample of U.S. equity REITs from 1995 to 2017, we find a strong positive correlation between REIT value (measured by firm Q, market-to-book equity ratio, and capitalization rate) and lagged operational efficiency measures. The results also show that more efficient REITs are associated with average stock returns that are up to 3.88% higher than less efficient REITs. These results are robust across REIT sectors and common risk factors.
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Beracha et al. (2019) studied this question.
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