The Centre for Asset Securitisation in Asia (CASA) intends to be a world-class research centre in real estate finance and economics, with a special emphasis on the real estate securitsation, and broader coverage of asset securitsation in Asia. Its primary goals are:

• to enhance our understanding of real estate property markets and how they are impacted by the local and global financing conditions,
• to investigate various forms of real estate securitisation and to propose practical and applied securitisation models for the future,
• to develop a real estate date depository designed to promote future academic research and to assist practitioners in their real estate investment and financing activities in Asia,
• to evolve its research activities into covering securitised and structured investment products in Asia.

CASA is co-directed by Professors Roberto S. Mariano (SMU) and Susan M. Wachter (Wharton School of the Univeristy of Pennsylvania). The centre also involves Professor Andrey Pavlov from the Wharton School and Simon Fraser University, from SMU, Professors Phang Sock Yong, Roberto S. Mariano, Augustine Tan, Winston Koh and Bernard Lee.

CASA researchers recently have published works on misaligned incentives and mortgage lending in Asia and on international evidence on diversification benefits of REITs. They also have acquired an extensive dataset of international REIT returns, with information about the geographic exposure of each REIT in the dataset.

Ongoing research in CASA involves the following topics:

• REITs and equity funding in Asia's real estate markets
• An international comparison of housing supply regimes and estimation of the supply elasticity
• Supply elasticities and real estate market bubbles
• Development and distribution of real estate price indices in Asia