Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Q&A: Shiller Sees 5 Years of Stagnant Home Prices

From the Wall Street Journal:

Robert Shiller, the Yale University economist who famously predicted the housing bust, was awarded the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics today. In this interview, he talks about the state of the housing market and the implications of low interest rates.

Is the slump in U.S. home prices bottoming out?

Shiller: The situation has definitely changed. With our numbers — the S&P/Case Shiller home price index — going up sharply. It looks like a major turnaround. We’ve been watching that for three months now, and we have some concern that it could be an aberration and temporary. But, at this point, it seems to be evident in just about every city in the U.S. That suggests it’s real. But it probably isn’t the beginning of a major boom, just because the economy is in such bad shape. There’s also a chance that it will reverse. It’s still only three months old, so it’s very hard to be sure at this point. The most likely scenario is that it won’t continue at this high rate of increase, but that it will neither go down a lot, nor up a lot.

So the index will move sideways for a while?

Shiller: Yes, for a while, meaning five years.

What are the main factors driving U.S. house prices? What could push them up, or cause another slump?

Shiller: The main factor is the world economic crisis and the efforts of governments around the world to stimulate the economy. Parts of those efforts have been directed at the housing market. In the U.S., there is an 8,000 dollar first-time home buyer’s tax credit which expires at the end of November. That’s a reason for concern, as it comes to an end. Also, the Federal Reserve has a plan to buy $1.25 trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities to support the housing market. They are most of the way through the program and anticipate phasing it out at some time in 2010 - that’s another thing that will go away. We’ve yet to see how the housing market will continue. Part of the problem is that people are buying now rather than later. When later comes, there could be a downturn in the market.

Read full interview

Sunday, September 27, 2009

In defence of financial innovation

by Robert Shiller at FT.com:

Many appear to think that the increasing complexity of financial products is the source of the world financial crisis. In response to it, many argue that regulators should actively discourage complexity.

The June 2009 US Treasury white paper seemed to say this. The paper said that a new consumer financial protection agency be “authorised to define standards for ‘plain vanilla’ products that are simpler and have straightforward pricing,” and “require all providers and intermediaries to offer these products prominently, alongside whatever other lawful products they choose to offer”.

The July 2009, HM Treasury white paper “Reforming Financial Markets” similarly advocated “improving access to simple, transparent products so that there is always an easy-to-understand option for consumers who are not looking for potentially complex or sophisticated products.”

They do have a point. Unnecessary complexity can be a problem that regulators should worry about, if the complexity is used to obfuscate and deceive, or if people do not have good advice on how to use them properly. Complexity was indeed used that way in this crisis by some banks who created special purpose vehicles (to evade bank capital requirements) and by some originators of complex mortgage securities (to fool the ratings agencies and ultimate investors).

Read full commentary

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Bubble, bubble, toil and financial trouble

By Robert J. Shiller

THE widespread failure of economists to forecast the financial crisis that erupted in 2008 has much to do with faulty models. This lack of sound models meant that economic policy makers and central bankers received no warning of what was to come.

As George Akerlof and I argue in our recent book "Animal Spirits," the current financial crisis was driven by speculative bubbles in the housing market, the stock market, and energy and other commodities markets.

Bubbles are caused by feedback loops: rising speculative prices encourage optimism, which encourages more buying, and hence further speculative price increases - until the crash comes.

But you won't find the word "bubble" in most economics treatises or textbooks. Likewise, a search of working papers produced by central banks and economics departments in recent years yields few instances of "bubbles" even being mentioned.

Indeed, the idea that bubbles exist has become so disreputable in much of the economics and finance profession that bringing them up in an economics seminar is like bringing up astrology to a group of astronomers.

Read full article

Monday, September 14, 2009

They Called Him Mr. Bubble

by David Leonhardt in Yale Alumni Magazine:

Sometime in the mid-1980s, Robert Shiller and John Campbell '84PhD created The Chart. It wasn't especially complicated. It showed average stock prices, relative to corporate earnings, going all the way back to the late nineteenth century. Wall Street analysts produce charts along these lines all the time. The measure is called the price-earnings ratio, and it is the single most common analytical yardstick of the stock market.

The yardstick that Shiller and Campbell created, however, came with a twist -- a twist that transformed their little chart into The Chart. Today, The Chart stands as one of the signature pieces of economic research of the past generation. It is rigorous enough to have appeared in the Journal of Portfolio Management and simple enough to be understood by those of us who are behind on our Portfolio Management reading.

Anyone who heeded the central lesson of Shiller and Campbell's analysis -- as well as the lesson of a subsequent chart, created by Shiller, on the housing market -- could have avoided some of the worst pain of the financial crisis. If Alan Greenspan had taken The Chart seriously during the late 1990s, Greenspan's reputation might be in better shape today. So might the United States economy. Nouriel Roubini, the doomsday-prophesizing finance professor at New York University who has lately become a media darling, credits The Chart for much of his clairvoyance.

Read full article