Robert Shiller

Infobox_Scientist
name = Robert Shiller

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caption =
birth_date = 1946
birth_place = United States of America
death_date =
death_place =
residence = US
nationality = American
field = Economist
work_institution = Yale University
alma_mater = MIT PhD 1972
University of Michigan BA 1967
doctoral_advisor = Franco Modigliani
doctoral_students = John Y. Campbell Pierre Perron
known_for = Financial economics Behavioral finance Real estate bubble
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =

Robert James "Bob" Shiller (born 1946) is an American economist, academic, and best-selling author. He has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) since 1980, was Vice President of the American Economic Association in 2005, and President of the Eastern Economic Association for 2006-2007. Shiller serves as the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a Fellow at the Yale International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. He is the founder and chief economist of the investment management firm MacroMarkets LLC.

He is ranked among the top 100 economists of the world.cite web |title= Economist Rankings at IDEAS |publisher= University of Connecticut |url= http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html |accessdate= 2008-09-07]

Career

Shiller received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1967 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1972. He has taught at Yale since 1982 and previously held faculty positions at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Minnesota. He has written on economic topics that range from behavioral finance to real estate to risk management, and has been co-organizer of NBER workshops on behavioral finance with Richard Thaler since 1991. His book "Macro Markets" won TIAA-CREF's first annual Paul A. Samuelson Award. He currently publishes a syndicated column.

In 1981 Shiller published an article in the "American Economic Review" titled "Do stock prices move too much to be justified by subsequent changes in dividends?" He challenged the efficient markets model, which at that time was the dominant view in the economics profession. Shiller argued that in a rational stock market, investors would base stock prices on the expected receipt of future dividends, discounted to a present value. He examined the performance of the U.S. stock market since the 1920s, and considered the kinds of expectations of future dividends and discount rates that could justify the wide range of variation experienced in the stock market. Shiller concluded that the volatility of the stock market was greater than could plausibly be explained by any rational view of the future.

The behavioral finance school gained new credibility following the October 1987 stock market crash. Shiller's work included survey research that asked investors and stock traders what motivated them to make trades; the results further bolstered his hypothesis that these decisions are often driven by emotion instead of rational calculation. Much of this survey data has been gathered continuously since 1989, and is available at Yale's [http://icf.som.yale.edu/confidence.index/ Investor Behavior Project] .

His book "Irrational Exuberance" (2000) – a New York Times bestseller – warned that the stock market had become a bubble in March 2000 (the very height of the market top) which could lead to a sharp decline.

On CNBC's "How to Profit from the Real Estate Boom" in 2005, he noted that housing price rises could not outstrip inflation in the long term because, except for land restricted sites, house prices would tend toward building costs plus normal economic profit. Meanwhile, co-panelist, David Lereah, continued to cheerlead. In February, Lereah had put out his book "Are You Missing the Real Estate boom" signaling the market top for housing prices. While Shiller repeated his precise timing again for another market bubble, because the general level of nationwide residential real estate prices do not reveal themselves until after a lag of about one year, people did not believe Shiller had called another top until late 2006 and early 2007.fact|date=September 2008

Books

* "The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It" by Robert J. Shiller, Princeton University Press (2008), ISBN 0691139296.
* "The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century," by Robert J. Shiller, Princeton University Press (2003), ISBN 0691091722.
* "Irrational Exuberance," by Robert J Shiller, Princeton University Press (2000), ISBN 0691050627.
* "Macro Markets: Creating Institutions for Managing Society's largest Economic Risks" by Robert J. Shiller, Clarendon Press, New York: Oxford University Press (1993), ISBN 0198287828.
* "Market Volatility", by Robert J. Shiller, MIT Press (1990), ISBN 026219290X.

See also

* Behavioral economics
* Journal of Behavioral Finance
* House price index
* Herd behavior
* Case-Shiller index

References

External links

* [http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller Homepage of Robert J. Shiller]
* [http://mba.yale.edu/faculty/profiles/shiller.shtml Faculty biography at Yale School of Management ]
* [http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=577 Stocks Revisited: Siegel and Shiller Debate]
* [http://www.project-syndicate.org/series/series_list.php4?id=27 "Finance in the 21st Century:" Robert Shiller's op/ed column] for Project Syndicate
* [http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/behfin/index.htm Robert Shiller's Workshop in Behavioral Finance]
* [http://www.yaleeconomicreview.com/fall2005/robertshiller.php Robert Shiller research from Yale Economic Review]
* [http://homepage.mac.com/ttsmyf The compelling Real DJIA, 1924–now]
* [http://homepage.mac.com/ttsmyf/3warnsRD.html The 3 Fed Chair warnings, Real DJIA]
* [http://www.risknet.de/index.php?RDCT=9979dca9c69bd91fcbbf Article on Robert J. Shiller (German language)]
* [http://www.thepolitic.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=38 Robert Shiller's interview on the housing crisis with "The Politic"]