American trio wins Nobel prize for asset forecasting

Three American scientists won the 2013 economics Nobel prize for research that has improved the forecasting of asset prices in the long-term and helped the emergence of index funds in stock markets.

“There is no way to predict the price of stocks and bonds over the next few days or weeks,” The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the 8m crown (€920,000) prize to Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen, and Robert Shiller.

“But it is quite possible to foresee the broad course of these prices over longer periods, such as the next three to five years. These findings ... were made and analyzed by this year’s Laureates,” the academy said.