Support for the expense preference hypothesis breaks down in a more detailed analysis of
advisor compensation. Neither ownership structure variables nor a market performance variable (annual stock returns) have any impact on the size of the advisor payment in a regression model explaining advisor compensation across firms and over time. In fact, only size as measured by the book value of total assets has any explanatory power.
Similar results hold for self-administered REITs, with one important difference. The
compensation (salary plus bonus) of the chief executive officer is positively and significantly influenced by the REIT’s annual market return. If self-administered REITs make better use of market-based performance compensation than advisor REITs as found here, this may explain the diminished use of ownership structure as a monitoring device among self-administered REITs. That may also explain the different ownership patterns of advisor REITs and self-administered
REITs.19