Agglomeration Risk in Retail Shopping Centers

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to quantify the agglomeration risk in retail shopping centers. We accept that consumers are attracted to a shopping center in proportion to the mass of the anchor tenant. Nonetheless we feel it important to allow this attraction to be stochastic with its time varying nature governed by a geometric Brownian motion. We then proceed to estimate the underlying stochastic correlation between the anchor and non-anchor tenants at a shopping center using a panel database of US regional and super-regional shopping centers. We conclude that retail agglomeration risks in retail shopping centers are significant, too significant to be ignored.