The Institute of Finance at PUEB is pleased to announce the 2nd Online Seminar in Finance.

Speaker: Laurens Swinkels, Erasmus University Rotterdam & Robeco Quantitative Investments

Date: May 20th, 2022, 11:00 (Warsaw time)

The seminar will feature two presentations:

Title 1: Empirical Evidence on the Ownership and Liquidity of Real Estate Tokens

Abstract: Empirical studies on the tokenization of real asset markets are necessary to better understand the potential and limitations of this radically new organization of financial markets. We examine the financial economic consequences of the tokenization of 58 residential rental properties in the United States, many of them located in Detroit. Consistent with the goal of tokenization, we find fragmentation as the median residential property has 254 owners. Investors with more than USD 5,000 invested in real estate tokens diversify their real estate ownership across properties within and across cities. Property ownership changes on average about once per year, and significantly more for properties available on decentralized exchanges. We document that the prices of real estate tokens move in line with the house price index, suggesting that investing in real estate tokens gives economic exposure to residential house prices.

Title 2: The Buffett Indicator: International Evidence

Abstract: Warren Buffett suggested that the ratio of the market value of publicly traded stocks to economic output could identify equity market mispricings. We extend the existing research from the United States to international equity markets by investigating the return-predictive characteristics of the market value of equity-to-gross domestic product for a dataset comprising fourteen countries. The findings corroborate that the “Buffet indicator” explains a large fraction of ten-year return variation for the majority of countries outside the United States. Low ratios have predicted above-average investment returns, while periods of high ratios have, on average, been followed by below-average returns over the subsequent ten-year period. We also compare the “Buffett indicator” to other well-known stock market valuation signals and phenomena, such as the cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio and mean-reversion in stock returns.

Speaker’s bio: Laurens Swinkels is Executive Director and Head of Quant Strategy at Robeco Investment Management. He serves as Associate Professor of Finance at Erasmus University Rotterdam and is a member of the Research Committee of Inquire Europe. His area of expertise is empirical asset pricing. He teaches Finance courses and has published his academic work in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance, and Financial Analysts Journal. Prior to joining Robeco in 2016, he was a Researcher at Norges Bank Investment Management and APG Asset Management. Laurens Swinkels holds a PhD in Finance and a Master’s in Econometrics from Tilburg University.