Purpose

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the use of public debt and investment activity of European listed real estate companies.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a hand-collected sample of debt structures of 102 European public real estate companies, and using European Central Bank lending standards survey as a proxy for bank credit availability, the authors test a conditional hypothesis on the relationship between investment rates and the use of public debt during period of constrained bank lending environment in Europe.

Findings

The results show that ex ante diversification of debt allows retaining higher investment rates when the main source of debt, bank lending, is shrinking. The effect is statistically and economically significant and increases during times of tight bank lending constraints. The authors find no support to debt capacity explanation of the effect. They neither find support of the higher investment rates to be indicative of overinvestment problem. The results are robust to alternative model specifications and estimators.

Research limitations/implications

The empirical analysis is limited to Europe.

Practical implications

Investments and the growth of real estate companies depend on their ability to seize value-increasing opportunities that arise in the competitive markets. This paper evaluates the role of a diversified debt structure in this context. The results suggest that debt structure can have material importance for the investment activity of European listed real estate companies and issuance of public debt can help companies to counterbalance the negative effects of restricted bank loan supply on the investment levels.

Originality/value

The paper extends the literature on debt structures of listed real estate firms by considering the effect of debt diversification on investments.

中文翻译：

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欧洲上市房地产公司的债务多元化和投资

目的

本文旨在研究公共债务的使用与欧洲上市房地产公司的投资活动之间的关系。

设计/方法/方法

通过使用102家欧洲公共房地产公司的债务结构的手工收集样本，以及使用欧洲中央银行贷款标准调查作为银行信贷可用性的代理，作者检验了有关投资利率与公众使用之间关系的条件假设欧洲受限制的银行贷款环境期间的债务。

发现

结果表明，当主要债务来源（银行贷款）正在收缩时，事前债务多样化可以保留较高的投资率。这种影响在统计上和经济上都是显着的，并且在紧缩的银行贷款限制期间会增加。作者发现对债务能力的影响没有任何支持。他们都没有找到较高投资率的支持来表明过度投资的问题。结果对于替代模型规范和估计器是可靠的。

研究局限/意义

实证分析仅限于欧洲。

实际影响

房地产公司的投资和增长取决于它们能否抓住竞争市场中出现的增值机会。本文评估了在这种情况下多元化债务结构的作用。结果表明，债务结构对于欧洲上市房地产公司的投资活动可能具有重要意义，而发行公共债务可以帮助公司抵消银行贷款供应受限对投资水平的负面影响。

创意/价值

通过考虑债务多元化对投资的影响，本文扩展了有关房地产上市公司债务结构的文献。