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The Case-Shiller index, a leading measure of U.S. residential real estate prices, was developed by Shiller and Karl Case, a Wellesley College economist. In the 1980s, Hansen developed a statistical method to better assess theories such as those of Fama and Shiller. "These are three very different kinds of people, and the thing that unites them all is asset pricing," says David Warsh, who tracks academic economists on his Economic Principals blog. Fama said his work came at a time when computers were starting to be used by statisticians and economists. Many of them were studying stock prices because they were the most easily available data. On Monday morning, Fama was preparing to teach his first class as a Nobel laureate. Asked whether his students would get any break, he said: "We'll see, but they're going to get an exam tomorrow anyway. They paid their money; they're going to get the full pill." Shiller noted that if regulated properly, global finance is "at the core of our civilization." "It seems to some people, it's selfish and money-grubbing," he said. "It doesn't really have to be that way. The financial crisis we've been through is traumatic, but we're learning from it." For example, he said many students from other countries are able to study in the United States because of financial aid made possible by investments. He also noted that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, established as a result of the recession, is holding finance to higher standards. Americans have dominated the Nobel in economics in recent years. The last time there was no American among the winners was 1999. The Nobel prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and peace were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in 1895. Sweden's central bank added the economics prize in 1968 as a memorial to Nobel. This year's Nobel science prizes awarded groundbreaking research on how molecules move around inside a cell, particle physics and computer modeling of chemical reactions. Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in literature and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. All awards will be presented to the winners amid royal pageantry on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.
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