Forward-futures price differences in the UK commercial property market: Arbitrage and marking-to-model explanations

In this paper the differences between forward and futures prices for the UK commercial property market are analyzed, using both time series and panel data. A first battery of tests establishes that the observed differences are statistically significant over the study period. Further analysis considers the modeling of this difference using mean-reverting models. The proposed models are then estimated with a number of alternative estimation methods and second stage statistical tests are implemented in order to decide which model and estimation method best represent the data.