Bob Shiller, Ex-Ante and Ex-Post

Scott Sumner has a nice comparison of Robert Shiller’s investment advice with that from one of my favourite supply-side economists, Alan Reynolds. Loyal readers of this blog will not be surprised to see that Scott’s post has my name all over it.

Scott asks, ‘Can people find me the dates where Shiller recommended people buy stocks?’

Sure. In his 2009 book with George Ackerlof, Shiller wrote: ‘there has been one way, at least in the past, in which almost everyone could become at least moderately rich … Invest it for the long term in the stock market, where the rate of return after adjustment for inflation has been 7% per year’ (p. 117).

Unfortunately, Shiller’s ex-post observations on stock market returns in 2009 do not sit well with his ex-ante prediction in 1996: ‘long run investors should stay out of the market for the next decade.’