Take a Free Course on the Financial Markets with Robert Shiller, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

This morn­ing, the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ic Sci­ence went to three Amer­i­can pro­fes­sors — Eugene F. Fama (U. Chica­go), Lars Peter Hansen (U. Chica­go) and Robert J. Shiller (Yale) — “for their empir­i­cal analy­sis of asset prices.” In his own way, each econ­o­mist has demon­strat­ed that “stock and bond prices move unpre­dictably in the short term but with greater pre­dictabil­i­ty over longer peri­ods,” and that mar­kets are “moved by a mix of ratio­nal cal­cu­lus and human behav­ior,” writes The New York Times.

Of the three econ­o­mists, Robert Shiller is per­haps the most house­hold name. In March 2000, Shiller pub­lished Irra­tional Exu­ber­ance, a book that warned that the long-run­ning bull mar­ket was a bub­ble, that stock prices were being dri­ven by human psy­chol­o­gy, not real val­ues. Weeks lat­er, the mar­ket cracked and peo­ple began to pay atten­tion to what Shiller had to say. Fast for­ward a few years, and Shiller released a sec­ond edi­tion of the same book, this time argu­ing that the hous­ing mar­ket was the lat­est and great­est bub­ble. We all know how that pre­dic­tion played out.

Shiller’s think­ing about the finan­cial mar­kets isn’t a mys­tery. It’s all on dis­play in his Yale course sim­ply called Finan­cial Mar­kets. Avail­able for free on YouTubeiTunes Video, and  Yale’s web site, the 23 lec­ture-course pro­vides an intro­duc­tion to “behav­ioral finance prin­ci­ples” nec­es­sary to under­stand the func­tion­ing of the secu­ri­ties, insur­ance, and bank­ing indus­tries. Record­ed in 2011, the course is oth­er­wise list­ed in the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1200 Free Online Cours­es. You can watch all of the lec­tures above, start­ing with Lec­ture 1. By fol­low­ing these links, you can find the course syl­labus, an out­line of the week­ly ses­sions, and a book list.

Per­son­al Note: About 10 years ago, I worked with Prof. Shiller on devel­op­ing an online course. Two things I recall about him. First, he struck me as being a very down-to-earth and unas­sum­ing guy. A plea­sure to work with. Sec­ond, we had some time to kill one day, and so I asked him (cir­ca 2005) whether it was crazy to buy a house. I mean, I had the guru sit­ting in front of me, in a chat­ty mood. What did I get? Bup­kis: “You know, it just depends…”  It was­n’t a bull­ish sign. So I took it to mean “Stay on the side­lines, kid.” In 2007, it seemed like sound advice.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es, Bring­ing Free Cours­es in Eco­nom­ics to the Web

John May­nard Keynes Explains Cure to High Unem­ploy­ment in His Own Voice (1939)

Hayek vs. Keynes Rap


by | Permalink | Comments (20) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (20)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • KenjiSummers says:

    @Dan I’m a lay­man. No eco­nom­ics back­ground. Will I be able to under­stand the mate­r­i­al from this course? If not, do you sug­gest any starter mate­r­i­al?

    • Hanoch says:

      The course is good, but it is not eco­nom­ics 101. It is spe­cif­ic to finan­cial mar­kets and some of it gets very tech­ni­cal. You can’t go wrong with Thomas Sow­ell’s excel­lent book “Basic Eco­nom­ics” for “starter mate­r­i­al”.

  • herve leungue says:

    hel­lo !
    my name , herve leungue
    stu­dent in catholic uni­ver­si­ty of cen­tral africa
    i’m interesd in folow­ing a fee online lessons on man­age­ment and buness admis­tra­tion ! thanks
    cel000237674031302

  • isaiah says:

    am inter­est­ed the course and want to know how much it will cost.

  • Mr Maxwell Benjamin says:

    Please dis­trib­ute The Resources of the plan­et to the NEEDY Peo­ple of plan­et earth before the plan­et sinks down with NUCLEAR Dis­trac­tion .

  • Khalida S Russell Rahman says:

    I am Bio­physi­cist, KCL, Admit­ted Solic­i­tor & a Bar­ris­ter at Law.

    I have been very ill, for very long time and am now on the road to recov­ery.

    I am very inter­est­ed in the course, but need to start the course, if accept­ed in 2108.

    Mobile : 0746 7033 708

    Please advise.

    Regards to all

    Khal­i­da

  • Javed says:

    How to get cer­tifi­cate

  • AFTER FINISHING THE COURSE HOW CAN I GET THE CERTIFICATE says:

    I will love to receive my cer­tifi­cate after com­plet­ing the course.

  • Tarik says:

    Thank you very much for this mate­r­i­al and for your won­der­ful work at openculture.com

  • Md Tarique Zafer says:

    Sir I want to join this course bea­cuse I’m soo inter­est­ed for that.

  • Md Tarique Zafer says:

    So excit­ed

  • edouard guinscia says:

    Thank u so much for this course and i’m so excit­ed to join the groupe. Please let me know if u want to know some­thing new about me . i’m edouard guin­scia 34 years old.

  • Mahdi Madanchi Zaj says:

    Hel­lo Dear
    I would like to join finan­cial mar­ket elearn­ing course .
    Best Regards

  • Gebby says:

    Hey,i want to talk to you.

  • Christine says:

    I would like to join finan­cial mar­ket e‑learning course.

  • Deceus pierre richard says:

    Im so excit­ed To join this group and the course

  • Deceus pierre richard says:

    I want To join this pre­cious course .

  • Civil Jonas says:

    It’s a course very impor­tant to help Peo­ple and have knowl­egde to under­stand how finan­cial works so I want to join the course .

  • MBENTI ESSIANE HYACINTHE says:

    Madame/Monsieur,

    Je suis inter­ressé par le MOOC en marché financier. J’aimerais savoir com­ment inté­gr­er le MOOC.

    Très Cor­diale­ment

    Hyacinthe Mben­ti Essiane

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.