Say "Robert Shiller," and many people will say "home prices." Everyone respects the economic model that the Yale economist helped produce.

In a New York Times commentary to start 2012, Shiller looked at what's ahead rather than what's behind and stumped for a plan to have mortgages for homes bring a tax credit that would help the lower brackets rather than the traditional interest deduction that's skewed to higher incomes.

"We used to talk a lot about helping homeowners in trouble. Instead, the bankers were bailed out – and now we hardly talk at all about aiding ordinary Americans," Shiller wrote.

Shiller said a proposal from Prof. Richard K. Green at the University of Southern California "offers stronger, more targeted encouragement for homeownership by focusing on people who might be giving up the dream of buying any home at all." See Green's YouTube comments.

Green's plan, the well-known Shiller said, "suggests creating a refundable tax credit as a percentage of mortgage interest payments, one that could be used even by those who take the standard deduction"