Is infrastructure a subcategory of real estate, real assets, or a separate asset class unto itself? That was the question raised in the cover article of the Summer 2008 issue of Institutional Investing in Infrastructure.

Institutions, professionals and investors with a stake in this market responded, citing similarities relating to the large fixed-asset and high current-return component in each of the three, but nonetheless expressed the opinion that, at a minimum, infrastructure is a hybrid. Our intent in the following article is to explore whether any empirical evidence can be developed to lend credence to this notion.

“I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it” — The Infrastructure Application. A Supreme Court justice used those words when describing a very different topic, but we begin with similar thinking. Using the same logic and statistics used to articulate the differences between other asset classes and using predefined index data, we wi