Irrational Exuberance (book)

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Irrational Exuberance
OCLC
263711758

Irrational Exuberance is a book by American economist Robert J. Shiller of Yale University, published March 2000.[1] The book examines economic bubbles in the 1990s and early 2000s, and is named after Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's famed 1996 comment about "irrational exuberance" warning of such a possible bubble.

Overview

Published at the height of the

dot-com boom, the text put forth several arguments demonstrating how the stock markets were overvalued at the time, and likely to offer poor return on investment based on analysis of the cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio which Shiller co-developed in the late 1980s. By happenstance, the dot-com bubble peaked the month of the book's publication,[2]
then collapsed by over 80% in the next two years.

The second edition of Irrational Exuberance was published in 2005 and was updated to cover the

housing bubble burst in 2007 and 2008, an event partially responsible for the Worldwide recession of 2008–2009
.

The third edition of Irrational Exuberance was published in 2015 and included new material on bonds. Shiller warns of significant downside risk to holding long term bonds. Shiller also warns that global house prices are in bubble territory and that US Stock prices are high.

Reactions

Finance professor

efficient market hypothesis is seriously flawed.[4]

The pair struck up a friendship, and in revised editions of Randomness Taleb says he urged Shiller to update Irrational Exuberance for what turned out to be the book's second edition.

Kirkus Reviews praised the third edition of book, saying it was a rarity among economic publications in being loyal to the complexities of the subject while "wholly accessible to general readers."[6]

Quotations

"[t]he stock market has not come down to historical levels: the price-earnings ratio as I define it in this book is still, at this writing [2005], in the mid-20s, far higher than the historical average. ... People still place too much confidence in the markets and have too strong a belief that paying attention to the gyrations in their investments will someday make them rich, and so they do not make conservative preparations for possible bad outcomes."

Gallery

  • The plot of the S&P Composite Real Price Index, Earnings, Dividends, and Interest Rates. From Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed.[7]
    The plot of the S&P Composite Real Price Index, Earnings, Dividends, and Interest Rates. From Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed.[7]
  • Price-Earnings ratios as a predictor of twenty-year returns. From Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed.[7]
    Price-Earnings ratios as a predictor of twenty-year returns. From Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed.[7]
  • Plot of U.S. home prices, population, building costs, and bond yields. From Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed.[8]
    Plot of U.S. home prices, population, building costs, and bond yields. From Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed.[8]

References

  1. . Retrieved 4 March 2013.
  2. ^ Long, Tony (March 10, 2010). "March 10, 2000: Pop Goes the Nasdaq!". Wired. Archived from the original on March 8, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  3. ^ "Mind Over Money". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 30 March 2023.
  4. ^ Justin Fox (14 Oct 2013). What the Great Fama-Shiller Debate Has Taught Us. Harvard Business Review, accessed 07 Oct 2022
  5. ^ Kirkus Review [dead link]
  6. ^ a b "source". Archived from the original on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
  7. ^ source

External links