Diversifying in Public Real Estate: the Ex-Post Performance

We calculate the ex-post portfolio performance for an investor who diversifies among stocks, bonds, REITS and cash. Simulations are performed for two alternative asset allocation frameworks – classical and Bayesian - and for scenarios involving two different samples and six different investment horizons. Interestingly, the ex-post welfare cost of restricting portfolio choices to traditional financial assets only is found to be positive in all scenarios for a Bayesian investor. On the contrary, substitution of E-REITS for stocks in optimal portfolios turns out to reduce ex-post portfolio performance over the nineties for a Classical investor