In the recent past, both consumers and real estate service providers have increasingly used the Internet to improve trading effectiveness and efficiency in the real estate market. Although Internet usage has reached phenomenal levels, the pure real estate electronic transaction, where the process is totally completed through the Internet, is still very much in its infancy. This indicates that s...

The Domesday Survey of 1086 provides high quality data on the inputs and outputs of most manors in England. A data envelopment analysis (DEA) of Essex estate data, McDonald (1997, 1998), indicated that the average efficiency of the Domesday agricultural economy was high as compared with more modern economies, that some tenants-in-chief displayed significantly more entrepreneurial flair than oth...

Thailand has been changed to rapid urbanization and industrialization since 1980s. During 1992 through 1996, the number of industrial factories in Rayong province increased very sharply. The major types of industries are petrol-chemical and plastic production. However, after the petrochemical industry boomed, the higher demand led to an industrial area expansion. The establishment of factories ...

Research on the international comparison of productivity has gained significant interest throughout several previous decades. Relatively little work has however been done in the real estate sector. This paper aims to develop a new productivity measurement framework for the international comparison of the real estate sector based on the newly-published OECD input-output database. Three multifact...

Real estate is the most important alternative asset class for pension funds and represents on average more than five percent of their total holdings. We employ a previously unexplored international database to examine the investments of some 880 pension funds in direct real estate and REITs over the 1990-2009 period. We document that larger funds are more likely to invest in real estate interna...

This paper examines if US monetary policy responds to asset prices. Using real-time data we estimate a Taylor-type rule with an asset price variable. This variable refers to real estate prices, considering that those exhibit an important share in households’ asset portfolio. Moreover, especially real estate prices seem to have a close connection to monetary conditions. To analyze this link we d...

In this paper, we review an emerging type of dwelling, indicated as Smart Home, with a focus on future user lifestyles, needs and preferences. Researchers envision a future information society stemming from the convergence of ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous communication and intelligent environments, especially residential environment. Smart Homes have noble aims; they are said to be able to s...