I have just spent a week in Ellmau, a picturesque village in the Austrian Tirol. I love visiting Austria. However, it had been five years since I was last in Austria, and the changes in the make-up of my fellow holidaymakers was remarkable. On my visits before 2007, there had been many Irish, English, Scottish, French and Italian tourists. In 2012, 95% of the tourists in our resort were German. What does this tell us about the respective health of these European economies? In addition, I was taken aback by the levels of freight traffic out of Austria and into Germany. Germany (using my extremely unscientific methods) appears to be booming.
My colleague and former PhD student Gareth Campbell has created a website about the British Railway Mania - click here . This episode has been described by the Economist as probably the greatest bubble in human history. Gareth's website provides background on the Mania and posits some explanations for the 'bubble'. In his explanation of why the bubble happened, Gareth places a lot of emphasis on investor myopia regarding future dividends and uncalled capital. His study of investors during the episode does not support the view that this episode was fuelled by naive and irrational investors.