Work in Progress
Work in Progress
My research interests are real asset markets, with a particular focus on real estate finance, real estate economics, and infrastructure investments.
● Needs Are Not Enough: The Gravity of Private Cross-border Infrastructure Investments, joint with Margaux Deltel and Stefan Morkötter
Abstract: Global infrastructure needs are substantial. Especially in emerging and developing economies where government budgets are smaller and the domestic investor base is limited, private cross-border infrastructure investments are crucial in financing these needs. However, globally, private capital does not flow to where needs are greatest. Therefore, this paper explains global infrastructure investment patterns and asks when infrastructure needs become investable opportunities for private sponsors. In doing so, we develop a two-sided structural gravity framework that explains 49,268 unique private cross-border infrastructure transactions across 169 origin and 214 destination countries from 2005 to 2025. We show that investment follows a pronounced gravity pattern shaped by geographical distance, political alignment, and prior bilateral experience. Most importantly, infrastructure needs attract private capital on average, but primarily in destinations with stronger governance, deeper financial systems, and more stable macroeconomic conditions. Hence, private sponsors finance infrastructure needs only when the destination environment makes them bankable.
● Mind the Concession: Headline Rents versus Effective Rents, joint with Nikodem Szumilo
Abstract: The price written into a contract need not be the price that matters economically. We study this distinction using commercial leases in London, United Kingdom, for which both headline rent-the visible price used in comparables, valuations, and market reporting-and effective rent net of concessions are observable. We first show that unusually high headline rents are systematically bundled with larger concessions. Following new rail station openings, nearby leases exhibit narrower concession wedges than comparison leases, confirming that concessions operate as genuine price-adjustment margins. Our central test exploits the transition from old UK GAAP to FRS 102, which reduced the usefulness of rent-free concessions as a contractpackaging device. In more exposed market segments, contracts shift toward fewer rent-free months and narrower concession wedges, while effective rents show no robust differential change. Institutional rules can therefore reshape the price markets observe without materially changing the bargain underneath.
● Heterogeneous Housing Valuation
Abstract: The pricing of residential real estate is driven by individual households’ preferences for housing services. In this study, I show how households with different sociodemographic characteristics value specific housing attributes heterogeneously. In doing so, I make use of a special auction design and a novel measure of private preference pressure, which reflects a household’s necessity to reveal its true private value estimate when buying a dwelling. Based on this economic mechanism, I use a threefold decomposition technique to show how a high and low amount of sociodemographic characteristics in a neighborhood, like income, education, age, and family status, lead to varying private value estimates of specific housing attributes. Creating a typical low- and high-characteristic buyer in a neighborhood further proves our main finding. Additionally, I exploit the introduction of stricter lending rules in a triple difference-in-difference setting to show how an asymmetric shock to the budget constraint of one of two buyer groups causally increases heterogeneous housing valuation in light of high preference pressure in an auction.
● Dynamic Debt Choice of Infrastructure Finance: Loans, Bonds, and the Project Lifecycle, joint with Endri Avduli
● Revenue Versus Reputation: Warring Incentives in the Rating Industry, joint with Roland Füss, Stefan Morkötter, Roman Stebler, and Simone Westerfeld
● The Spatial Variation of Price-To-Rent Ratios, joint with Roland Füss, Jörg Schläpfer, and Benedetta Vernuccio
● Unveiling the Pulse of Property Markets: Constructing a Real-Time Real Estate Index, joint with Thies Lindenthal
● Where Homes Get Built: Local Determinants of Housing Construction Activity, joint with Roland Füss, Jörg Schläpfer, Marco Schmid, and Benedetta Vernuccio
● The Investment Lifecycle of Data Centers: Institutional Entry, Pricing, and Exit, joint with Lea Hamm, Takahashi Masashi, and Xue Xiao
Alois Weigand, Ph.D.
University of St.Gallen (HSG)
Swiss Institute of Banking and Finance (SBF-HSG)
Unterer Graben 21
CH-9010 St.Gallen