Robert Shiller

2013 Nobel Laureate in Economics | Distinguished Professor of Economics, Yale University | Author, "Narrative Economics"

Economics

Behavioral Economics

Nobel Laureates

One of the most far-seeing political economists of our time, Robert J. Shiller is known the world over for his brilliant forecasts of financial bubbles and his penetrating insights into market dynamics and how human psychology drives the economy. He has offered audiences unerring predictions of the last two bubble collapses and a road map for reversing the financial crisis.

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A best selling author, Dr. Shiller has written many books on finance. His most recent book, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events, offers a new way to think of the importance of popular stories that may have an economic life of their own. Using a rich array of historical examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that affect individual and collective economic behavior — what he calls "narrative economics" — has the potential to vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises, recessions, depressions, and other major economic events. The stories people tell — about economic confidence or panic, housing booms, the American dream, or Bitcoin — affect economic outcomes. Narrative Economics explains how we can begin to take these stories seriously. It may be Robert Shiller's most important book to date.

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Shiller is also the author or co-author of several other finance books, including Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception (coauthor George Akerloff), the New York Times bestseller, Irrational Exuberance, published in March 2000 and a revised/expanded Third Edition in 2015, NYT bestseller, (with Akerloff) Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, The Subprime Solution, and Finance and the Good Society. He is also the author of The New Financial Order.

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Robert is a famously successful innovator in the emerging field of behavioral finance. He co-created the most widely quoted home price index in the country (the S&P/Case-Shiller Index). He also helped launch an active market in house-price futures and options on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He cofounded MacroMarkets LLC, which uses the Case-Shiller methodology to develop innovative financial instruments to facilitate investment and risk management. He contributes regularly to the Economic View column of The New York Times and to Project Syndicate.

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Dr. Shiller is the Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University, and Professor of Finance and fellow at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. He has strong connections to the securities industry.

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Robert Shiller is a strong presenter for audiences looking for inspiration and innovation in financial markets and financial services, and to understand the impact of financial crises on the social fabric.

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Credentials

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2013 Nobel Laureate in Economic Science
Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University
Professor of Finance and fellow at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management
Co-developer, S&P/Case-Shiller© Home Price Indices
President, American Economic Association
Cofounder, MacroMarkets LLC
Fellow, International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management
Bloomberg’s 50 Most Influential People in Global Finance, 2011
Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers 2010 and 2009
Regular contributor, Economic View column, The New York Times
Research associate, National Bureau of Economic Research
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellow, Econometric Society
Member of the Academic Advisory Panel for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Recipient, Guggenheim Fellowship

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Topics

Insurance — an inspirational field for innovation

We tend to think of insurance as a staid and even dismal industry to be in. Robert considers insurance as potentially the source of the most inspirational financial products imaginable. He focuses on saving real people from terrible personal disasters, real companies from corporate catastrophes, with cutting edge innovations that make real money. What could be more exciting? He will inspire audiences in this industry.

Finance and IT — how technology drives innovation

Information technology has made it vastly easier and cheaper to create new financial products and to develop the electronic databases they require. At the same time, technology creates significant new risks to companies and individuals, because it’s evolving so rapidly and it’s so fundamentally important. Few people have plumbed the opportunities and dangers that the confluence of finance and IT has created as deeply as Robert Shiller.

Bubbles & How Markets Work

Robert Shiller is the world’s greatest authority on bubbles. His prescient bestseller Irrational Exuberance predicted the collapse of the 1990s bubble before it happened. More importantly, Robert knows why it happened — no one understands market volatility and the psychology that drives market swings better. At the same time, he argues, bubbles are not the big bugaboo that they’re hyped up to be. This makes him especially valuable to pension-plan sponsors, endowment managers and anyone else that doesn’t want to get caught sitting on a speculative bubble when it bursts.

Innovation in Finance and Markets

We are in the midst of an explosion of invention in financial products and instruments, driven mostly by advances in information technology, and Robert thinks this is just the beginning. He’s dedicated several chapters of his book, The New Financial Order, to creating new opportunities in finance and he’s started two successful companies to implement these ideas.

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