Skype Conference Call Anyone?

Looks like there will be four of us on this blog. Others are welcome to join.

Would anyone be interested in brief a "Skype" conference call on Friday, March 29th at 9:30 AM (Texas time - US Central)?

The topics of the conference call would be 1) special issue topic for IJSPM, 2) the apartment concession study, and 3) any other ideas/issues anyone would like to address. However, just seeing if the "conference call" function on Skype works well as a communication tool would be useful (on skype go to "Call" then at the bottom of this menu is "Start Conference Call").

Skype can be downloaded on your computer for free at www.skype.com (you will need a microphone or a headset is probably best).

If you can make this conference call, please indicate so by "commenting" to this post. If this is not a good time or date, please suggest an alternative. Also, feel free to add any topics for discussion to our brief agenda. Finally, if I do not have your Skype "ID," please send it to me so I can add it to the conference call list.

Hope you can make it. JAH

Reference Point Formation Over Time

There is an interesting experiment on SSRN in the area of finance. This study looks at reference point formation over time. In a time series, the first and last reference point is weighted heavily with intermediate points receiving small weights.

In the property/real estate area we have many studies identifying important "static" reference points. The closest real estate study to this SSRN paper is probably the Diaz/Wolverton (1998) paper in Real Estate Economics (link on this blog). I would say that there is probably a lot to be explained regarding reference point formation over time in the property area.

Baucells, Manel, Weber, Martin and Welfens, Frank, "Reference Point Formation Over Time: A Weighting Function Approach" (October 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1022930

Forthcoming "Regret Aversion" study in JRER

It has not been published yet, but if you go to the ARES website (link found on this blog), there is an experimental study coming out on regret aversion. The direct link is http://cbeweb-1.fullerton.edu/finance/journal/papers/content/forth/accepted.htm and the paper is titled "Regret Aversion and False Reference Points in Residential Real Estate." Regret aversion may still be an understudied area in a property/real estate context.

Behavioural Special Issue of IJSPM

The International Journal of Strategic Property Management is considering a special issue dedicated to behavioural property research with a target publication date in 2009. I am asking anyone who is interested in behavioural property research if they would be interested in submitting original research to such an issue. For a successful special issue in this area, contributions from US, UK, New Zealand, Africa, Japan, and any new geographies would be important.

If you are interested in submitting a manuscript to this prospective issue, please indicate your interest by sending an e-mail to ahansz@gmail.com. This is not a commitment but a gauge of general interest.

Abstracting/Indexing Information for IJSPM:

ABI INFORM Global
Academic Onefile
Business Source Complete
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts
Current Abstracts (Ebsco)
ICONDA (IRBdirekt)
INSPEC
Journal of Real Estate Literature
ProQuest 5000 International
ProQuest Research Library
ProQuest Social Science Journals
RealSource
SCOPUS
TOC Premier (Ebsco)
VINITI Abstracts Journal (Referativnyi Zhurnal - RZh)

Also, Managing Editor Assoc. Prof. Dr. A. Banaitis has informed me that IJSPM is negotiating an agreement with Versita (www.versita.com) provider of Metapress (www.metapress.com) electronic publishing technology in CEE. Metapress is the world's leader in providing electronic publishing technology to scholarly journals. It hosts about 2,500 journals from over 60 publishers, including such well-known companies as Springer. Each paper will have DOI, participate in CrossRef, etc.