Robert Shiller

Abstract

The data collection effort about investor attitudes that I have been conducting since 1989 has now resulted in a group of Stock Market Confidence Indexes produced by the Yale School of Management. These data are collected in collaboration with Fumiko Kon-Ya and Yoshiro Tsutsui of Japan. Some of our earlier results are also noteworthy: Results of Surveys about Stock Market Speculation 12/99. Stock market data used in my book, Irrational Exuberance [Princeton University Press 2000, Broadway Books 2001, 2nd ed., 2005] are available for download, U.S. Stock Markets 1871-Present and CAPE Ratio. This data set consists of monthly stock price, dividends, and earnings data and the consumer price index (to allow conversion to real values), all starting January 1871. The price, dividend, and earnings series are from the same sources as described in Chapter 26 of my earlier book (Market Volatility [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989]), although now I use monthly data, rather than annual data. Monthly dividend and earnings data are computed from the S&P four-quarter totals for the quarter since 1926, with linear interpolation to monthly figures. Dividend and earnings data before 1926 are from Cowles and associates (Common Stock Indexes, 2nd ed. [Bloomington, Ind.: Principia Press, 1939]), interpolated from annual data. Stock price data are monthly averages of daily closing prices through January 2000, the last month available as this book goes to press. The CPI-U (Consumer Price Index-All Urban Consumers) published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics begins in 1913, for years before 1913 1 spliced to the CPI Warren and Pearson's price index, by multiplying it by the ratio of the indexes in January 1913. December 1999 and January 2000 values for the CPI-Uare extrapolated. See George F. Warren and Frank A. Pearson, Gold and Prices (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1935). Data are from their Table 1, pp. 11–14.