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Between 2007 and 2015, the European Commission invested €1.846 billion in a new policy initiative called JESSICA (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas). Since European cities in particular have perceived a shortage of investment dedicated to urban regeneration projects, JESSICA will finance more than 2000 higher risk projects through Urban Development Funds as a financial intermediary in order to create economic stimulus. Moreover, replacing traditional grant funding by revolving financial instruments (loans, guarantees and equity capital) is a central part of the ongoing reform of EU cohesion policy. The special challenge of JESSICA is to combine these financial engineering instruments with integrated urban planning issues in a sustainable fund model. However, it is not yet clear whether this new policy instrument is as effective as European decision-makers believe, because up to now there has been no evaluation available on how successful JESSICA has been in achieving its ambitious objectives. Our empirical analysis is the first one to cover the impact of this innovative EU initiative in all 28 EU member states by making outcomes of the policy change measurable in monetary terms. Since revolving financial engineering instruments are a central part of the Europe2020 strategy, we derive key success factors for sustainable urban finance and give recommendations to adjust the policy instrument in the current programming period as part of the ongoing process of a reformed EU cohesion policy.

Abstract. We present a citation-based analysis of the most important journals on real estate and real estate finance over a time period from 1986 to 2010. For each year, those three articles with the highest number of citations according to Google Scholar are identified. A thorough analysis of all 75 selected articles reveals that the focus of interest has been on (1) empirical research, (2) mainly using data of residential real estate, with (3) the primary objective of evaluating real estate investment until the midst 1990s. In order to derive reliable risk-return relations for real estate investment, (4) asset pricing as the main task of real estate appraisal is in the centre of attention, too. Appraisal issues have relatively gained importance for the last fifteen years in comparison to investment issues. Interdisciplinary aspects and sustainable issues are only very rarely integrated in appraisal methods, the focus is primarily on maximizing economic returns. Therefore, our citation analysis confirms that the Financial Management Approach of Dasso and Woodward (1980) is the predominant approach particularly in the United States. Our findings regarding our basic sample of articles are crosschecked by several robustness tests. For future research activities, it seems to be quite promising to focus on the one hand on interdisciplinary aspects and on the other hand to contribute to the theoretical foundation of real estate with the aim of developing a common body of knowledge.