Hardcover, Oxford University Press, 1993

Paperback, Oxford University Press, 1998

Macro Markets: Creating Institutions for
Managing Society's Largest Economic Risks

Robert J. Shiller
Oxford University Press, 1993

     Winner of the First PAUL A. SAMUELSON Award, TIAA-CREF, 1996

It is proposed that a new class of markets, macro markets, markets for claims on aggregate income and service flows, be established. These markets would help people to manage the biggest economic risks facing society. Our existing financial markets are inadequate to deal with such risks. Our stock markets are markets for claims on corporate dividends, and yet the latter are only a few percent of national incomes, only 3 percent in the United States. The proposal here is to establish liquid international markets for claims on the other 97 percent. These would include markets for national incomes, components and aggregates of national incomes, and real estate. Establishing such unprecedented new markets presents some technical problesm which this book attempts to solve. There are proposals for perpetual futures market design, and for new index number construction methods for cash settlement of contracts. [254 pages]

Contents: 1. Introduction, 2. Psychological Barriers, 3. Mechanisms for Hedging Long Streams of Income, 4. National Income and Labor Income Markets, 5. Real Estate and Other Markets, 6. The Construction of Index Numbers for Contract Settlement, 7. Index Numbers: Issues and Alternatives, 8. The Problem of Index Revisions, 9. Making It Happen, Notes, References, Index

Translations:

Chinese Simplified Characters: Academic Works in Economics Series, Oxford University Press, United Kingdom