NEW YORK - June 7, 2009 - Robert Shiller, the Yale University professor who predicted the collapse of the U.S. housing market, writes in a New York Times article today that home price declines “may well continue for some time.”

Shiller, co-founder of a home-price index that bears his name, said prices may “continue to fall or stagnate” in 2010 and 2011. The S&P/Case Shiller index of 20 major cities showed median home prices were down 32 percent in March from their peak in July 2006.

Shiller noted that U.S. home prices didn’t begin moving up, “even incrementally,” until six years after the end of the prior housing boom in 1990-91. Home prices in Japan fell every year for 15 years after the 1991 bursting of Japan’s real estate bubble, he wrote in the column.

While long price declines appear to defy common sense and traditional economic laws, Shiller writes that most homeowners don’t behave like investors trying to time the market. Decisions to buy or sell homes are more frequently tied to life-style changes or growing pressures of economic necessity, further reason why a buying decision would be delayed at a time when unemployment is at quarter-century highs.