Fama, Hansen, and Shiller have developed new methods for studying asset prices and used them in their investigations of detailed data on the prices of stocks, bonds and other assets. Their methods have become standard tools in academic research, and their insights provide guidance for the development of theory as well as for professional investment practice. Although we do not yet fully understand how asset prices are determined, the research of the Laureates has revealed a number of important regularities that are helping us to arrive at better explanations. Nobel Summary from Donald Marron
How do we use the theory? Here is an example:
Schiller got the Nobel because he can figure out that the third spike in the SP500 will likely collapse soon. I am being a bit sarcastic, but the work on risk makes sense.
Hansen is the interesting one, he derived economic models that are finite dimensional. that is not smooth. Finite dimensional distributions are semi-orthogonal, meaning the distributions overlap by a bit. This is true of the Shannon norm for optimum flow, but I am not sure Hansen went that far.
Fama got the Nobel for figuring out that information is more liquid than shoelaces. One of the results would be that information about growth in 1933 likely came first, gold second and shoelaces third. Hence, Christina Romer and Scott Sumners are likely wrong about monetary stimulus.
I will make it simple. The market minimizes the number of transactions needed to move assets in a positive flow environment. The problems arise in periods of the doldrums, just before a crash, when assets don't flow.
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