Productivity, Technology and Efficiency Change of Islamic and Conventional Reits in Malaysia

Problem/Purpose – The paper examined total factor productivity changes namely Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) for the Malaysian Real Estate Investment Trust (M-REITs) by drawing attention to the Islamic and conventional REITs Design/methodology/approach – Data was attained from annual reports for the period of 2007 to 2015. The non-parametric approach of MPI-DEA examined the productivity, technological and efficiency change indices. Findings – The result suggested both Islamic and conventional REITs have exhibited productivity regress of 18.09% and 11.51% respectively during the period of study. These productivity regress could mainly due to the regress in technological rather than efficiency change. One possible reason for this technological regress is likely due to REIT requirement in which the REIT managers could not retain their earning and reinvest their income for the following year. The REIT managers need to have access to external capital for purchasing new asset, which could lead to a higher cost of capital than the retained earnings. On the other hand, both conventional and Islamic REITs exhibited an increase of 28.33% and 61.54% respectively for efficiency change, mainly due to an increase in managerial rather than scale, implying that both REITs have been managerially efficient in managing the operating costs but operating at the non-optimum scale of operations. Research limitations/implications –This study provide empirical evidence on the source of productivity regress for M-REITs and insights on the comparative analysis of Islamic and conventional REITs. Future research suggested to be undertaken include the identification of key determinants for the productivity changes of M-REITs using the parametric approach. Originality/value – This paper is the first analysis on the productivity changes of Islamic REITs vis-à-vis conventional REITs. By examining these values, the identification of main sources of Malaysian Islamic REITs productivity regress assist M-REIT managers to develop strategies in improving their REIT productivity and provide competitive edge in the market.