Eamonn D’Arcy

An empirical investigation of retail rents in five European cities

Presents the findings of the first comparative econometric investigation into the influence of demand side forces on retail rent determination in European cities. Examines five major retail centres ‐ Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, London and Paris ‐ over the period 1980 to 1994. Estimates for each city a theory consistent model which tests influences of GDP, retail sales and consumer expenditure on changes in retail rents. Univariate and multivariate regressions show that the relative explanatory capabilities of these influences exhibit a notable degree of variation between the cities. A time series cross‐sectional analysis demonstrates that contemporaneous changes in GDP are the most important common determinant of retail rents across the cities and that the process of rent determination in Paris is influenced by different structural factors from the other cities examined.

Key Issues in Property‐led Urban Restructuring: a European Perspective

Discusses issues resulting from a property developer or investor′s active involvement in urban restructuring strategies. Illustrates them with recent European examples of property‐focused regeneration strategies. Argues that the developer′s decision on whether and under what form to participate in such ventures should include analysis of the affect of programme implementation and the integration of the property development component into the ‘implementation structure′.

Graaskamp, Institutional Economics, and the Real Estate Market

This chapter examines the institutional content of Graaskamp’s thinking on the real estate process from the perspective of new institutional economics. Graaskamp’s institutional representation of market process focuses on the relationship between the property market and the wider economic and social system and thus fits well within earlier traditions of institutional analysis in urban land economics in the United States. However, Graaskamp does not break from these traditions and consider explicitly institutional issues within the property market itself, such as institutional change, the institutional structure of the market, and the institutional influences specific to particular groups of market actors or organizations. From the perspective of new institutional economics and drawing on evidence from property markets in the United Kingdom, the chapter maps out the core components of what a more holistic institutional paradigm of the real estate market might consider. As such it seeks to provide a logical extension of Graaskamp’s thinking on real estate process to include an explicit discussion of institutional concerns at the level of the property market itself.

Markets, Market Structures and Market Change: Expanding the Real Estate Research Paradigm

Abstract This paper seeks to challenge conventional thinking about markets and issues of market structure and market change in real estate research. Using a broadly institutional economics approach to markets it proposes a framework for analysis which focuses on the range of objectives the market accommodates, the origins of pressures for change, the objectives of market actors and their market roles. Two applications are considered as illustratios of the potential of this approach to reveal important insights into how real estate markets work in practice.