The level of representative underwriting and the underwriting costs of REIT SEOs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors influencing the underwriting discount for US Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Seasoned Equity Offerings (SEOs).

Design/methodology/approach – The study provides new evidence on determinants of underwriting discounts with a comprehensive dataset of 783 US REIT SEOs from 1996 until June 2010. Ordinary least squares regressions are performed to estimate the effect of the level of representative underwriting along with other potential factors on underwriting discounts.

Findings – The study complements the well-documented notion of the economies of scale in SEO underwriting discounts. The equally (value) weighted underwriting discounts averaged 4.21 per cent (4.10 per cent) with a declining trend over time. The findings of this study show the statistically and economically significant negative effect of the level of representative underwriting on the underwriting discounts, as well as the significance of the structure of underwriting syndicate in determining the underwriting discounts. The findings suggest that issuers can minimize the costs of raising secondary equity capital by optimally allocating the underwriting business among the underwriters.

Originality/value – This paper adds to the international REIT SEO literature by exploring new evidence behind underwriting discounts. The study includes data before and after the REIT Modernization Act 1999 and during the recent global financial crisis period.

Neighbourhood environments and children's social capital : investigating the pattern of relationships

The main purpose of this work was to investigate the pattern of relationships among three constructs: neighbourhood socio-physical environment, children's social interactions and their social capital. This work was designed as a two-phase mixed-methods research. Phase I included several qualitative studies to develop a scale of neighbourhood socio-physical environment, a scale of children's social interactions and a scale of children's social capital. Phase II was a cross-national survey that used these three scales to collect information from high school students in Beijing and Sydney. The main finding of this work was that there were strong and significant correlations among the three constructs. Children's assessment of their neighbourhood socio-physical environment was positively correlated with their social interactions and social capital, which indicated that children who lived in better neighbourhoods had more social interactions and larger volumes of social capital. Strong positive relationship was also found between children's social interactions and social capital, which implied that better-connected children interacted with their friends more.

An immunological approach to raising alarms in video surveillance

Inspired by the human immune system, and in particular the negative selection algorithm, we propose a learning mechanism that enables the detection of abnormal activities. Three detectors for detecting abnormal activity are generated using negative selection. Tracks gathered by people’s movements in a room are used for experimentation and results have shown that the classifier is able to discriminate abnormal from normal activities in terms of both trajectory and time spent at a location.

An immunological approach to raising alarms in video surveillance

Inspired by the human immune system, and in particular the negative selection algorithm, we propose a learning mechanism that enables the detection of abnormal activities. Three types of detectors for detecting abnormal activity are developed using negative selection. Tracks gathered by people's movements in a room are used for experimentation and results have shown that the classifier is able to discriminate abnormal from normal activities in terms of both trajectory and time spent at a location.

Raising the volume : Indigenous voices in news media and policy

This article explores Indigenous contributions to shaping public and policy agendas through their use of the news media. It reports on research conducted for the Australian News Media and Indigenous Policy-making 1988–2008 project that is investigating relationships between the representation of Indigenous peoples in public media and the development of Indigenous affairs policies. Interviews with Indigenous policy advocates, journalists and public servants identified the strategies that have been used by individuals and Indigenous organisations to penetrate policy debates and influence public policy. The article concludes that in the face of a neo-liberal policy agenda amplified through mainstream media, particular Indigenous voices nevertheless have had a significant impact, keeping alive debate about issues such as the importance of bilingual education programs and community involvement in the delivery of primary health care.

Determinants of capital structure of A-REITS and the global financial crisis

This paper contributes to the capital structure literature by investigating the determinants of capital structure of Australian Real Estate Investment Trusts (A-REITs) over the period 2006-2009. By using a panel approach and a Global Financial Crisis (GFC) dummy variable, our analysis incorporates the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) shock which appears to have affected the market after December 2007. We find that A-REIT size, profitability, tangibility, operating risk and number of growth opportunities impact similarly to many previous studies of international entities upon the degree of leverage. We also find mixed support for prevailing capital structure theories of Pecking Order, Trade-off and Agency Theory, but find that Market Timing Theory can be rejected over our sample period. With specific focus after onset of the GFC, we find that the relationship between capital structure and our independent variables is somewhat distorted. Consequently, the postulations of theory also become distorted whereby changes to capital structure come about because of the primary goal to survive, rather than managerial opportunism.

Consciousness-raising tasks versus deductive approach : two form-focused instruction types in teaching grammar to Iranian high school EFL learners

Consciousness-raising (CR) task is a new way of teaching grammar developed in communicative contexts although little has been written on the effectiveness of CR tasks in EFL setting. The present study is an attempt to investigate the impact of CR tasks in Iranian EFL setting by comparing them with deductive, grammar lessons common in the Iranian schools. The subjects of this study were 80 EFL pre-university male students who were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control one. The control group received three ordinary teacher-fronted, deductive lessons, a common way of teaching methodology in Iran, on three grammatical structures (adverb placement, indirect object placement and the use of relative clause). The experimental group, however, was treated with three ‘consciousness-raising’ (CR) tasks dealing with the same target structures. The results showed that in the short-run, CR tasks were as effective as deductive approach in promoting the learners’ grammatical knowledge while in the long-run, the CR group maintained their gains more effectively than the deductive group. The conclusion is that CR tasks can function more effectively than deductive approach if the following conditions are met: (a) performing the consciousness-raising tasks in learners’ L1; (b) providing the learners with feedback whenever they encounter a problem in solving the tasks; (c) grouping the learners in such a way that at least one learner in each group would be more proficient than the other members to help the less proficient ones understand and discover the rules more effectively.

The role of capital-labour substitution in economic growth

Purpose – Although the importance of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour (s) has been recognized in many areas in economics, this parameter has not received enough attention in economic growth. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent development in the importance of s in economic growth.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper specifically reviews the possibility of perpetual growth and slowdown, and the asymptotic behaviour of the balanced growth path for different values of s. It also reviews the determinants of the aggregate s.

Findings – Based on the empirical evidence that the value of s significantly departs from the Cobb-Douglas value of unity, the paper recommends employing the constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function in both theoretical and empirical growth research.

Originality/value – This paper offers a new perspective on the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour due to its evaluation of various factors, methods and approaches.