Retail Vacancy Rates: The Influence of National and Local Economic Conditions

Executive Summary. This study examines the extent to which local retail vacancy rates are influenced by vacancy rates in surrounding communities versus the overall national vacancy rate in the retail sector. Consistent with prior research, our simultaneous spatial autore-gressive analyses of pooled retail market vacancy rates suggests that there is considerable spatial correlation in vacancy rates among neighboring metropolitan areas. There is also evidence of substantial temporal correlation in local vacancy rates. While spatial correlation dominates the national vacancy rate in explaining variation in the level of vacancy rates, changes in the national vacancy rate explain a statistically significant portion of the variation in the changes in local vacancy rates. The nature and extent to which changes in national rates affect local rates is found to differ markedly across MSAs.