bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

sponsorType

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

copyrighted

customTimezone

liveContents

Americans Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller won the Nobel Prize for economics on Monday for developing methods to study trends in stock, bond and housing markets.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that through their separate research, the three had laid the foundation of the current understanding of asset prices and changed the way people invest.
While it’s hard to predict whether stock or bond prices will go up or down in the short term, it’s possible to foresee movements over periods of three years or longer, the academy said.
“These findings, which might seem surprising and contradictory, were made and analysed by this year’s laureates,” the academy said.
Fama, 74, and Hansen, 60, are associated with the University of Chicago. Shiller, 67, is a professor at Yale University.
Shiller, an economist famous for having warned against bubbles in technology stocks and housing, said he reacted with disbelief when he got the call from the academy early on Monday.
“People told me they thought I might win. I discounted it. Probably hundreds have been told that,” he said.
Shiller is known for developing the Case-Shiller index, a leading measure of US residential real estate prices, with Karl Case, a Wellesley College economist.
He said he believes finance is a structure for society, which if regulated properly is “at the core of our civilization”.
“It seems to some people it’s selfish and money-grubbing. It doesn’t really have to be that way. The financial crisis we’ve been through is traumatic, but we’re learning from it,” Shiller said.
For example, he said many students from other countries are able to study in the United States because of financial aid made possible by financial investments. He also said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established as a result of the recession is holding finance to higher standards.
Starting in the 1960s, Fama and others showed how difficult it is to predict individual stock prices in the short run. His findings revolutionised the practice of investing, leading to the emergence of index funds.
Two decades later, Shiller showed that there is more predictability in the long run in stock and bond markets, while Hansen developed a statistical method to test theories of asset pricing.
“These are three very different kinds of people and the thing that unites them all is asset pricing,” says David Warsh, who tracks academic economists on his Economic Principals blog.
American researchers have dominated the economics awards in recent years; the last time there was no American among the winners was in 1999.
The Nobel committees have now announced all six of the annual US$1.2 million awards for this year.
The economics award is not a Nobel Prize in the same sense as the medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and peace prizes, which were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in 1895. Sweden’s central bank added the economics prize in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel.
This year’s Nobel science prizes awarded ground-breaking research on how molecules move around inside a cell, particle physics and computer modelling of chemical reactions. Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in literature and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
All awards will be presented to the winners amid royal pageantry on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.


Nobel Prize-winning research on institutions gains traction in China to aid private sector

Japan’s Hiroshima bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo receives Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammadi gets 3-week reprieve from prison after surgery

Bangladesh’s turmoil deepens as Nobel laureate Yunus struggles to restore order

Nobel Prize

Three Americans win Nobel Prize for economics 

Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller. Photos: AFP

Photos of Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller are displayed during a news conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Monday. Photo: Reuters

Nobel economists are masters of theory, if not of practice 

Robert Barro of Harvard is a favourite to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Nobel Peace Prize winner wants to focus on eliminating Syria arms

OPCW Director General Ahmet Uzumcu. Photo: EPA

OPCW Director General Ahmet Uzumcu. Photo: Reuters

Trio win Nobel Chemistry Prize for computer modelling work

Winners of the Nobel chemistry prize (left to right) Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel. Photo: Reuters

Winners of the Nobel chemistry prize (left to right) Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel are displayed during a press conference in Stockholm on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Winners of the Nobel chemistry prize (left to right) Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel. Photos: AFP

News

World

Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller win Nobel Prize for asset price forecast research


Americans Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller won the Nobel Prize for economics on Monday for developing methods to study trends in stock, bond and housing markets.
