Modeling time-varying conditional betas : a comparison of methods with application for REITs

Beta coefficients are the cornerstone of asset pricing theory in the CAPM and multiple factor models. This chapter proposes a review of different time series models used to estimate static and time-varying betas, and a comparison on real data. The analysis is performed on the USA and developed Europe REIT markets over the period 2009-2019 via a two-factor model. We evaluate the performance of the different techniques in terms of in-sample estimates as well as through an out-of-sample tracking exercise. Results show that dynamic models clearly outperform static models and that both the state space and autoregressive conditional beta models outperform the other methods.