NBER Working Papers by Robert Hendershott

Periodic sharp sustained increases and then reversals in asset prices lead many to posit irrational price bubbles. The general case for irrationality is that real asset prices simply have moved too much given the future real cash flows the assets are reasonably likely to produce. A corollary for property is that observed mean reversion in real cash flows is not reflected in investor valuations, resulting in asset values being too high when real cash flows are high and vice versa. In this paper we interpret, critique and extend existing analyses of movements in real commercial property prices during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Unlike the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation and the Bank Insurance Fund, the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF) entered the 1990s in a state of accounting solvency. This paper develops evidence to show the more important fact that NCUSIF remained solvent in a market-value sense as well. Differences in institutional product lines and risk-taking opportunities between credit unions and banks and thrifts are not consequential enough to explain the differences in their funds' health. This paper explains how differences in decisionmaking environments made managerial and regulatory risk-taking incentives in the credit-union industry diverge substantially from those governing banks and S&Ls. The differences in incentive structure support the hypothesis that priv...