Introduction to Special Issue of JREFE on REITs

This paper is an introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics (JREFE) devoted to papers on Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). The papers were especially written for a conference sponsored by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. The papers deal with the theoretical and empirical aspects of REIT underwriting behavior, corporate governance, asset pricing, takeovers and going-private transactions, capital-market based financing, changes in monetary policy and changes in REIT stock prices, and risk-bearing and liquidity.