P-seller: I don’t think it’s a matter of being allowed or not. After all, Peach is entitled to his own professional opinion. All we can ask for, is full disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest. This is of course a tricky area; just because Peach used to be with the MBA and the NAR doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s biased.

Rich: I think that what we have here is an example of selection bias, in the sense that we were far more likely to hear opinions of industry-affiliated economists. No one bothered to go ask a few econ professors what their opinion was. Shiller got press coverage b/c he had predicted the dot-com bust, while Leamer leads the respected UCLA/Anderson Forecast.

I personally was convinced by 2002-3 that prices were out of whack. When a neighbor sold his house in 2004 for almost double what he paid in 2000-01, I decided to sell too! I have graduate training in econ and statistics, and all my colleagues I talked to about this issue agreed that prices had balloned up to ridiculous levels, if we were to simply compare them to rents or incomes.