Robert Shiller: A Skeptic and a Nobel Winner

Robert J. Shiller, a professor at Yale, learned on Monday that he had won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, along with Lars Peter Hansen and Eugene F. Fama of the University of Chicago. The Nobel committee described Professor Shiller as a founder of the field of behavioral finance, an innovator in incorporating psychology into economics and a pioneering analyst of speculative bubbles in the stock and real estate markets.

He is also one of a group of eminent economists who write the Economic View column for Sunday Business, and has contributed 60 of those columns since August 2007. As the editor of that column, I have talked to him often about his work, and on Wednesday, he called me from the airport en route to a lecture at the Dutch central bank in Amsterdam. Here is an edited, condensed version of that conversation.

Read more

The Housing Recovery Could Be on Shaky Ground

From Fool.com:

To understand the state of the housing market now I spoke with the co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, Robert Shiller...

Jennifer Schonberger: The latest Fed minutes showed the central bank is concerned the activity in the housing sector could be leveling off. What is your take on the state of the housing market now? Do you share the same concern as the Fed?

Robert Shiller: Yes. Home prices have been going up for nearly a year now, according to our data, the S&P/Case-Shiller indices ... Normally we could extrapolate that kind of upward trend because historically home prices have shown a lot of momentum. But I think we're in a very unusual circumstance because of the massive bailouts, the homebuyer tax credits, the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities -- and these things are coming to an end. So it's an unusual period. So I don't trust the trend that we have. I'm worried that it might get reversed.

Schonberger: Speaking of momentum, I remember in our last discussion that momentum and confidence levels are keys in your view to examining the health of the housing market. Is momentum waning now?

Shiller: In terms of the S&P/Case-Shiller numbers, the rate of growth of home prices has fallen. If you look at them in nonseasonally adjusted terms -- just the raw data -- they're falling. But if you seasonally adjust them they're going up. But they're not going up so briskly as they were in the middle of 2009. That's one leading indicator. There are others as well. One that I particularly like is the National Association of Home Builders Housing Market Index, which is based on a survey of their members. That has turned down starting last fall. So we've had months of decline in homebuilders' impressions as to the strength of the market.

Read full interview

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

Video: Reuters Interview

Shiller unsure of housing's strength (view video)

Video: Talk Of Green Shoots Premature

Yale University economist Robert Shiller on the economy, consumer confidence, the stimulus plan and oil prices. (View video or read transcript.)

Maclean’s Interview: Robert Shiller

From Macleans.ca:

Robert Shiller is a professor of economics at Yale and the bestselling author of Irrational Exuberance, in which he predicted the collapse of the stock market. He was also one of the first economists to accurately foresee the devastation that would follow the subprime mortgage crisis. In Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, written with George Akerlof, he argues that today’s markets are as much driven by human psychology as by finance. Shiller uses the idea of “animal spirits,” a term invented by revolutionary economist John Maynard Keynes, to describe the powerful effect of human emotion and confidence on the economy, and to push for more government intervention and bigger stimulus packages in the U.S. and Canada.

Read the interview

Surveying the economic horizon: A conversation with Robert Shiller

From The McKinsey Quarterly:

In this video interactive, economist Robert Shiller discusses four aspects of the current crisis: regulating for financial innovation, reducing trust in models, redesigning institutions, and the time line for turnaround. His perspectives are informed in part through his research that psychology—particularly an understanding of human irrationality—can play a key role in explaining economic breakdowns and exploring effective solutions.

Watch/read the interview