The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded yesterday to Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller for "their empirical analysis of asset prices". For some, Fama will be controversial pick. But for my money, Shiller deserves his prize for his work on irrational exuberance and animal spirits rather than his 1981 asset pricing paper. Click here for a piece at Bloomberg, which briefly outlines the contribution of the three laureates.
According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.