Robert Shiller Q&A: Housing Sage Says Prices Could Drop Further

WASHINGTON -- He predicted the tech-stock collapse. He foresaw the housing bust.

So naturally, everyone wants to know what Robert Shiller thinks of today's stock prices, now perched at a four-year high. Or about the direction of home prices.

Keep your hopes in check. Shiller is disinclined these days to offer specific predictions about the direction of stocks, home prices or any other asset whose prices can surge or plunge before we can fully grasp what's going on.

In his 2000 book "Irrational Exuberance," Shiller warned of a stock-market bubble. Five years later, Shiller detected a bubble in home prices and argued that it posed a grave threat.

Shiller, a Yale economist, is co-creator of the widely followed Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index. He has been widely ranked among the most influential economists in the world.