Robert J. Shiller
Robert Shiller, a Professor of Economics at Yale and chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, is the author of The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It.
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2010-01-18
| The severity of the global financial crisis that we have seen over the last two years has to do with a fundamental source of instability in the banking system, one that we can and must design out of existence. To do that, we must advance the state of our financial technology. ... read |
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2009-12-09
| Home prices in the US rebounded strongly over the course of 2009, and similar recoveries have been underway in Australia, the UK, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, and elsewhere. But home prices remain unhinged from economic fundamentals, which suggests that volatility, not smoothly rising prices, will be the order of the day in housing markets in 2010.... read |
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2009-11-13
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The IMF, along with many national leaders, seem ready to give full credit to what the Fund calls "strong public policies" for engineering what might be the end of the global economic recession. But, in terms of the certainty of the outcome, formulating economic policy is more like psychotherapy than engineering.... read |
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2009-09-14
| The failure of economists’ models to forecast the current crisis will mark the beginning of their overhaul, which will happen as economists’ redirect their research efforts by listening to scientists with different expertise. Only then will monetary authorities gain a better understanding of when and how speculative bubbles can derail an economy, and what can be done to prevent it.... read |
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2009-06-16
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The current world economic crisis was substantially caused by the collapse of speculative bubbles in real estate (and stock) markets – bubbles that were made possible by widespread misunderstandings of the factors influencing prices. These misunderstandings have not been corrected, which means that the same kinds of speculative dislocations could recur.... read |
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2009-05-13
| Since hitting bottom in early March, the world’s major stock markets have all risen dramatically. But the only way a revival of world confidence can be sustained is if our thinking coordinates around some inspiring story beyond that of the price increases themselves.... read |
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2009-03-13
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The world economic crisis is being driven by a profound loss of confidence, as people everywhere, consumers and investors alike, are canceling spending plans. But restoring confidence is not a simple matter of stimulating spending and credit expansion, as the history of the Great Depression and its aftermath shows.... read |
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2009-01-15
| The IMF's Chief Economist, Olivier Blanchard, and several IMF economists have recent proposed that governments offer businesses and/or individuals “recession insurance.” This might work, since it would reduce uncertainty, which has placed a lot of spending decisions – by businesses (on higher output) and by consumers (on the items that businesses produce) – on hold.... read |
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2008-12-01
| The boom that preceded the bust in 2008 in the world’s housing markets was caused by the faulty idea that investments in homes are a sure route to wealth. But people's belief can suddenly be disrupted if plainly visible events contradict it, and 2009 will shape up as a year of even more profound disenchantment.... read |
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Reviving the Animal Spirits
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Robert J. Shiller 
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The world’s fundamental economic problem today is a staggering loss of business confidence - a weakening of what Keynes called the "animal spirits." One reason is that people know enough about the Great Depression to understand that, unlike previous economic convulsions, there are parallels with today.... read
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2003-09-26
| Around the world, newspapers trumpet a "housing bubble" about to burst. The Economist has run numerous cautionary articles with titles like "Castles in Hot Air." "Housing Prices Soar, Fueling Bubble Fears," chirped The Wall Street Journal. "The Property Bubble Menaces Growth," warned Le Monde. "Homes Bubble May go Toxic," The Sydney Morning Herald admonished. ... read |
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2005-07-25
| Governments around the world want to promote entrepreneurship. Though most business start-ups will never amount to much, each little company is an experiment, and a great deal of experimentation is necessary to produce the occasional firm that can transform a nation’s economy – or even rise to international significance. In short, entrepreneurship is an incubator, and one that is essential to long-term economic success.... read |
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2005-09-26
| Asset prices– stocks, commercial real estate, and even oil – are, historically, at high levels around the world. Although history is often a good predictor of future trends, every now and then something fundamental changes that makes for a new pattern. The important question now is whether today’s high asset prices are the result of some such fundamental development, or whether bubbles have formed. ... read |
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2005-12-27
| Throughout the world, people suffer from a serious perception error that has inhibited them from taking concrete steps to protect themselves from inflation or deflation. The error is called the “money illusion ” – the belief that a nominal unit of currency is the best measure of value, even though its real value is unstable.... read |
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2006-01-13
| Ben Bernanke, the nominee to replace Alan Greenspan this month as Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, is a highly capable economist who has devoted his professional life to understanding the historical role of central banks and the problems that they have faced. His views represent, as much as can be expected, a consensus among those who have studied the issues carefully.... read |
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2005-08-23
| The Chinese economy has been growing at such a breathtaking annual pace – 9.5% in the year ending in the second quarter of 2005 – that it is the toast of the world, an apparent inspiration for developing countries everywhere. But is China getting too much of a good thing?... read |
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2004-12-20
| Homeowners around the world effectively gamble on home prices. Their risks today are often big due to real estate bubbles in such glamour cities as London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Istanbul, Moscow, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Those bubbles may keep expanding, or may burst, leaving many homeowners mired in debt.... read |
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2005-06-28
| The G-8 finance ministers have agreed to cancel $40 billion of debt owed by eighteen of the world’s poorest countries. This is a triumph for common sense. But, at only $238 per person in the eighteen countries, debt relief alone is hardly enough to help the poor.... read |
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2005-10-31
| Who is richer, you or I? As long as we both have enough to live comfortably, it shouldn’t matter much. Many of us try not to let it matter. But sometimes such comparisons gnaw at us. In an era of globalization, with rapid economic growth in some areas and stagnation in others – and with television and the internet allowing us to see how others live – these comparisons are an increasingly important factor in the world economy. ... read |
