A Real-Estate Roller Coaster (Literally)
The Yale economist Robert Shiller has indexed American housing prices going back to 1890. You know how people like to say that such-and-such experience “was a real roller-coaster ride”? Well, the...
View ArticleFreakonomics Quorum: Is It Time to Believe in the Housing Bubble?
Following last week’s quorum about street charity, we’ve now brought in a half-dozen bright people to address a very different issue: Is it finally time to believe in the housing bubble? And how much...
View ArticleWhere Have All the Macroeconomists Gone?
A reporter friend of mine recently asked me for a short list of academic economists he should call to better understand the current financial and economic mess. I found it a more difficult question...
View ArticleWhat We Still Don’t Know About the Mortgage Crisis
On Tuesday, September 16, at a rally at the Colorado School of Mines, Barack Obama criticized John McCain, saying: Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book: you...
View ArticleShiller’s Subprime Solution(s)
In my last post, I focused on what we still don’t know about the causes of the subprime crisis. But here I’ll tell you about six solutions proposed by Robert Shiller in his book The Subprime Solution....
View ArticleBrother, Can You Spare a Trill?
Economists?Mark J. Kamstra and?Robert J. Shiller propose?a new tool for government financing: “trills” — i.e., shares in U.S. GDP. “We propose a small-denomination GDP share paying a coupon each year...
View ArticleHating Economists but Loving Economics
Robert Shiller points to an interesting conflict in economics today: “We are in the midst of a boom in popular economics: books, articles, blogs, public lectures, all followed closely by the general...
View ArticleDarwin as Economist?
One session at the recent AEA meetings addressed “popular economics,” with a panel including Diane Coyle, Robert Frank, Steve Levitt, and Robert Shiller. (Shiller wrote a bit about it on Slate.) Many...
View ArticleThe Nobel Prize Goes to an Odd (but Worthy) Economic Trio
(Photo: Solis Invicti) I awoke yesterday to the happy news that two of my friends won the Nobel Prize in economics.* Gene Fama was one of the three recipients. He and I share two important beliefs...
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