Irrational exuberance

For other uses of the term Irrational exuberance, see the Irrational exuberance (disambiguation) article.

Robert Shiller's plot of U.S. home prices, population, building costs, and bond yields, from Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed.^[1] Shiller shows that inflation adjusted U.S. home prices increased 0.4% per year from 1890–2004, and 0.7% per year from 1940–2004, whereas U.S. census data from 1940–2004 shows that the self-assessed value increased 2% per year.

Irrational Exuberance is a March 2000 book written by Yale University professor Robert Shiller, named after Alan Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" quote. Published at the height of the dot-com boom, it put forth several arguments demonstrating how the stock markets were overvalued at the time. Shiller was soon proven right when the Nasdaq peaked on the very month of the book's publication, and the stock markets collapsed right after. The second edition of Irrational Exuberance published in 2005 is updated to cover the housing bubble, especially in the United States. Shiller writes that the real estate bubble may soon burst, and he supports his claim by showing that median home prices are now six to nine times greater than median income in some areas of the country. He also shows that home prices, when adjusted for inflation, have produced very modest returns of less than 1%/year.

External links

• Book website