Pull and Push Factors as Determinants of Foreign REIT Investments

摘要

We investigate pull and push factors as drivers of foreign investments in REITs to understand the timing and magnitude of these capital flows. Pull factors are country-specific fundamentals that draw foreign investors to a REIT market. Push factors are fundamentals of other countries such as the United States based on which foreign investors push into or withdraw from a particular REIT market. Using the South African (SA) REIT market as a laboratory, we find that push factors have more explanatory power than pull factors for the behavior of foreign investors in SA REITs. Thus, foreign REIT investors indeed rush in and out of the SA REIT market based on the performance of alternative geographical and asset markets. However, the importance of different pull and push factors for foreign investor behavior varies between small-/medium- and large-cap SA REITs.