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We test for the existence of single and multiple bubble periods in four Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) indices using the Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller (SADF) and the Generalized SADF. These methods allow us to estimate the beginning and the end of bubble periods. Our results provide statistically significant evidence of speculative bubbles in the REIT index and its three components: Equity, Mortgage and Hybrid REITs. These results may be valuable for real estate financial managers and for investors in REITs.JEL Classification: C22; G12

We propose a novel approach to model investors' uncertainty using the conditional volatility of investors' sentiment. Working with weekly data on investor sentiment, six major U.S. stock indices, and alternative measures of uncertainty, we run various tests to validate our proposed measure. The estimates show that investors' uncertainty is greater during economic downturns, and it is linked with lower investors' sentiment. In addition, the results support the existence of a positive conditional correlation between sentiment and returns. This positive spillover between sentiment and returns is interpreted as a positive link between investors' uncertainty and market risk. We also find that investors' uncertainty and market risk are strongly driven by their lagged values. Our measure consistently captures periods of high uncertainty as shown by a positive and highly statistically significant correlation with other existing measures of uncertainty.

We examine the impact of corporate diversification on firm risk exposure from 1998 to 2016. We find that both global and industrial diversification mitigate idiosyncratic and world market risk while having a negligible impact on U.S. market risk, but the effects vary before, during, and after the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Before the crisis, only global diversification mitigates idiosyncratic risk, but it increases firms' exposure to world market risk. During the crisis, industrial diversification increases idiosyncratic risk, but both types of diversification increase exposure to U.S. market risk. After the crisis, both types of diversification increase firms' exposure to U.S. market risk but have negligible impact on idiosyncratic and world market risk. Our findings remain robust after we control for the potential endogeneity of the diversification decision through various self-selection models.

We test for the existence of single and multiple bubble periods in four Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) indices using the Supremum Augmented Dickey-Fuller (SADF) and the Generalized SADF. These methods allow us to estimate the beginning and the end of bubble periods. Our results provide statistically significant evidence of speculative bubbles in the REIT index and its three components: Equity, Mortgage and Hybrid REITs. These results may be valuable for real estate financial managers and for investors in REITs.JEL Classification: C22; G12