New Book Examines Why Academics Missed The Great Housing Bubble and What Mistakes Were Made

Lawrence Roberts, author of The Great Housing Bubble, documents many instances in the academic literature where scholars completely missed the housing bubble. He further speculates on why most academics did not see the housing bubble and did not warn the public to its perils.

[USPRwire, Mon Feb 02 2009] Lawrence Roberts, author of “The Great Housing Bubble,” notes that academics largely missed the housing bubble. He quips, “It is amazing to this author how so many academics along with the general public can completely miss financial bubbles and deny their existence past the point where it is obvious to everyone.”

The Great Housing Bubble documents several cases where academics wrote articles at or near the peak of the housing bubble where they contended prices were supported by fundamentals. Roberts found this very surprising, “Even at the very peak of the insanity, there are well-educated market observers that miss the signs or believe the fallacies which serve to inflate the bubble.” In one paper Roberts found this statement: “Thus, what appears to be a bubble in some markets might just be a reflection of normally high volatility in those markets.” Roberts jokes, “This is like saying ‘what appears to be a bubble isn’t a bubble because bubbles are normal in these markets.’ When the authors can look right at the data and not understand what they are seeing, there is little hope the paper will draw the right conclusions.”

Roberts speculates that many academics may have been homeowners who did not want to see the housing bubble. He notes, “Many market prognosticators lose their objectivity in data analysis the moment they take a position in the market they are studying.” Roberts observes that the failure of academics may also be because they are viewing markets from a faulty paradigm. The Behavioral Economists like Robert Shiller saw this coming, but many who still subscribe to the tenets of Efficient Markets Theory completely missed the bubble.

About the Author, Publisher and Book:
Lawrence Roberts, author of “The Great Housing Bubble,” is known as the Housing Bubble Cassandra. He publicly predicted the housing price crash as the primary writer for the Irvine Housing Blog (http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/). From his unique vantage point in Irvine, Calif. – the center of the subprime universe – Roberts carefully documents in his book the conditions and practices that inflated the largest real estate bubble in history. He holds a Master of Science in Land Development from Texas A&M University, and he consultants to the land development industry.

Monterey Cypress Publishing is a small press specializing in real estate and personal finance related books, audio books, and video presentations.
Purchase “The Great Housing Bubble,” at Amazon.com. Obtain free ebook here: =>
http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/

Contact:
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http://www.thegreathousingbubble.com/