In the empirical analysis that follows, the market performance of the two REIT forms is
analyzed using standard methods for comparing two or more portfolios. If indeed self administration helps mitigate agency problems, then self-administered REIT performance should
dominate advisor REIT performance. For comparison purposes, we group REITs into two
portfolios determined by their organizational form. Since eleven REITs changed form over the
period of this study, those eleven are grouped by the organizational form they held the longest.
Ten of the eleven REITs switched from the advisor to self-administered form in 1992 and are
classified as belonging to the advisor REIT portfolio. Though not reported here for brevity, very similar results were obtained when these firms were excluded from the sample