This thesis explores Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI) as an alternative vehicle for the supply of debt finance to financially excluded enterprises. CDFIs are part of a broader approach to addressing financial exclusion that is experienced by commercial and social enterprises in the US and UK. The thesis explores US and UK CDFI lending processes to develop an understanding of how financial and social objectives are balanced in the lending process and the ways in which CDFIs become embedded in local financial and business support networks. The analysis is based upon detailed comparative research of CDFIs located in the US and the UK; interviews were undertaken with CDFIs, their clients and a quantitative analysis of a CDFIs loan portfolio was undertaken. The research concludes that CDFIs are complex dynamic organizations as they have to balance a double or triple bottom line which has the potential to undermine the firm’s long term survival or mission. The danger is that over time a CDFI will reduce its exposure to risk and become more like a mainstream bank. The tensions with the CDFI business model implies that they will only ever provide a partial solution to the enterprise finance gap.

This thesis develops three chapters which extend our understanding of asset performance within the London office market by analysing the determinants and measurement of capital returns. The first chapter examines whether enlisting the services of a star-architect allows developers to persuade city planners to build bigger within the tightly regulated London property market, and therefore to engage in rent-seeking behaviour. We find that outside protected conservation areas famous architects can not only build taller, but that their designs have no effect on building sale prices holding the amount of space constant. For a given land plot however, the ability to build taller increases total floorspace and developer profits even when accounting for the increased costs of hiring a famous architect and building to their higher standards. The second chapter investigates potential sources of bias in commercial repeat-sales price indices by constructing such an index for the central London office market and examining the sources of index change relative to the underlying market. We find evidence that employment density changes and the restrictiveness of new development in the relevant local authority are key external drivers of bias on estimated price levels. This discrepancy arises because repeat-sales occur disproportionately in areas where changes in these attributes differ relative to the stock as a whole. The third chapter presents a comparison of seven competing real estate price index construction methodologies in the London office market. This exercise sheds light on the history of London office market returns from 1998-2010, and the relative pros and cons of the major index construction methods utilized by research and industry. This comparison also reveals substantial differences between indices in the timing of market turning points and various descriptive statistics, and demonstrates that the hedonic model outperforms the repeat-sales index due to the greater inclusivity of sale observations.