UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — David C. Ling, Ken and Linda McGurn Professor of Real Estate at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business, will deliver the seventh annual Austin J. Jaffe Real Estate Lecture from 1:30-3 p.m. Aug. 28 in 125 Business Building at Penn State's University Park Campus.
"We are very excited to have David Ling deliver this year's Austin Jaffe Memorial Lecture, which was created in 2020 to honor the memory of my colleague and good friend, Austin Jaffe," said Brent Ambrose, Jason and Julie Borrelli Faculty Chair in Real Estate and director of Penn State Smeal's Borrelli Institute for Real Estate Studies.
The Austin Jaffe Real Estate Lecture series is sponsored by the generous gift from Austin's wife Lynn, children Alex and Roxanne and Austin's friends, Ambrose added. This year, Ling will share his research on public versus private commercial real estate investment performance.
Ling is one of the most widely recognized scholars in real estate finance, with research spanning real estate investment trusts, private commercial real estate markets, institutional investor behavior and the effects of climate change on commercial property values. He is the co-author of "Real Estate Principles: A Value Approach," now in its eighth edition and among the most widely used real estate textbooks in the country.
He has received the profession's highest honors, including the James A. Grasskamp Award from the American Real Estate Society (2024), the David Ricardo Medal (2010) and the George Bloom Award from the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (2011), of which he served as president in 2000.
He serves on the editorial boards of Real Estate Economics and the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics and has been a board member of the Real Estate Research Institute since 2004.
Ling received his doctorate in real estate and economics from the Ohio State University in 1984.
The Austin Jaffe Real Estate Lecture Series honors the late Austin Jaffe, who was the Philip H. Sieg Professor of Business Administration at the Smeal College of Business and served as the associate dean for international programs, the associate director of what is now known as the Borrelli Institute for Real Estate Studies and chair of the Department of Risk Management before retiring after nearly 40 years at Penn State. Jaffe passed away in May 2019.
As a forerunner in real estate studies, Jaffe’s legacy lives on in the series, which brings renowned real estate scholars to Penn State to share their knowledge and explore industry topics with students.
The Jaffe family’s endowment makes the series possible, which kicked off its inaugural event in 2021 with speaker Abdullah Yavas, Robert E. Wangard Real Estate Chair at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. Since then, it has welcomed:
- Gilles Duranton, Dean’s Chair in Real Estate and professor, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business
- Wenlan Qian, Ng Teng Fong Chair Professor in Real Estate, National University of Singapore
- Susan Wachter, Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate and professor of finance, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business
- Piet Eichholtz, professor in real estate and finance, Maastricht University, Netherlands
- Siqi Zheng, STL Champion Professor of Urban Real Estate and Sustainability, Massachusetts Institute of Technology