Shiller, from anonymous

October 15, 2013 |

 Shiller got the Nobel Prize? I haven't read his scholarly papers, but from what I have read he seems prone to making blatant errors in his statistical thinking.

A common theme of his errors was to take N heavily overlapping intervals and sort of pretend that they were all independent observations. In one case he took annual stock market levels for ~30 years ("x") and compared them with the retrospectively known "present value of future earnings" ("y") summed over the following ~50 years. He then claimed that the market was irrational because there was a lot more variability among the "x" numbers than among the "y". He failed to appreciate that really the "N" for his "y" values was approximately one.

The other supposedly big insight that he had was to smooth the S&P earnings over a 10-year period to come up with a valuation metric that's averaged over the economic cycle. That's fine, but Nobel-worthy? Probably Larry Williams has come up with dozens of indicators of that sort.

Victor Niederhoffer writes: 

He also concluded that the stock market is much more variable than dividends and is therefore irrational. I guess they had to give one irrational person a Nobel and another rational person a Nobel. The terrible thing is as Tyler Cowen pointed out vis a vis the choice between the two frond runners for the Chair, one is worse than the other. As Sholem Aleichem would say, a plague on… 

Richard Owen adds: 

Mr. Shiller's work is used all over the world. It is quoted by near every stock picker fund manager and used by many in their allocations.

People state Shiller's work was "obvious". Similarly perhaps Kahneman. All this, whilst understandable, seems a bit rum. Their insights came at a time when they were heterodox to the consensus. And if his data was limited by reality, he still slugged out a conclusion. Surely that is a good thing?

If Shiller's work was easy, then good for us all that an economic Nobel is on the shelf for all of us to claim should we wish. But perhaps it only looks easy in hindsight?

I should imagine felt somewhat of a buzz that he could out-think the Nobels, and made a fortune from it. Professor Shiller got worldwide acclaim and academic pedigree. Both seem satiated. Perhaps Mr. Seykota is in fact correct that everyone gets what they want out of the market?

Stefan Jovanovich writes: 

Do the site readers who have Charles, Kim and the Chair's understanding of statistics have any thoughts about the fact that "earnings" changed their definition after 1913? Before that date they were, for all practical purposes, actual cash dividends because corporations did not have income tax returns. In the late 19th century it would not have been enough for the S&P's dividends to be comparable to bond yields; they would have had to be nearly double for equity securities to be seen as sound. To those of us in the bleachers still suffering from the Pirates' defeat, it seems fairly clear that neither "dividends" nor "earnings" can meet Professor Shiller's test of rationality for the entire period for which he collected data since the game changed from rounders to baseball after the 3rd inning.

It also occurs to those of us crying into our popcorn that the influences of "book value" only become important after the IRS becomes a stakeholder in the earnings of corporations. If you as an owner/promoter find yourself unable to maintain the payouts that were once "normal", the logical and rational move is to persuade the buyers of your securities that they are not just buying earnings and dividends but also assets. The Morgan Bank were meticulous about identifying the physical security for railroad debt - the deeds, trackage, mineral rights, etc. - but they made no assessments of the "value" of those assets. "Net book value" is not a term you will find in their accounts. Yet, magically, by the 1920s the term begins to appear and by the 1950s the Oregano and others have made it a metric to be engraved on the tablets of sacred financial wisdom.

Richard Owen writes: 

This is a great explanation of the money system. But the labeling of it as fraud seems quite a leap. To take just one point: the idea the fed has private shareholders. Sure, when the fed was originally set up, it was a concession granted to the participants of good value. But so was the nuclear and broadcast industries and oil rights and so many other things.

The UK bought out the boe shareholders post war. The USA they remain. However, I believe the fed has a profit sweep to the treasury so the balance sheet expansion is of low incremental profit value. Indeed the shareholders might even get a fixed coupon on par value thus it is not much more exciting or nefarious at this point than holding an 8pc government bond? But I am not sure.

The reason why the fed shareholders have never been published line by line (if this is correct)? I am not sure, but it probably is just a bunch of major banks and the 8pc on their stock is a tiny fraction of total profits. And holding the stock is perhaps is admin quirk for being a dealer or something?

As to the idea of a world without fractional reserve banking. It is possible, but a totally different economy. General Electric can either hold its working capital as subordinated creditor to a bank or cut out the banks and hold the mortgages the bank holds instead. Each has different merits, but currently not many engineering firms will accept a pile of New England mortgage certificates as down payment for a jet engine.

Stefan, is it like that? Or is there misunderstanding here?

Stefan Jovanovich writes: 

Richard raises the central question that had Americans literally at arms with one another long before slavery was a political issue of any greater importance than the Grand Bank's fishery. What is money and what is credit? What is the ultimate payment unit of account for those who want to be Keynesian traitors to the greater good by just holding cash? The Constitution offered the answer but most Republican-Democrats and a good number of Whigs quickly found that they did not like the answer. They still don't.


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