Yale professor Robert Shiller has a different explanation for the housing bubble, or perhaps an unpopular one given the current influence of investors in the housing recovery.

The Sterling Professor of Economics writes in the New York Times that since 1997, the U.S. has lived through the biggest real estate bubble in the country’s history. Of course, it’s a bubble that eventually popped, leading to national pain.

The reason for this? He says, “Fundamental factors like inflation and construction costs affect home prices, of course. But the radical shifts in housing prices in recent years were caused mainly by investor-induced speculation.”

But Shiller notes before the housing bubble, the nation had experience with another type of bubble: land fever.

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