QUCEH is today hosting the 2014 European Association for Banking and Financial History New Scholars Workshop - the line-up is here and the papers are available here. The workshop is for PhD students working in finance and financial history. I'm particularly looking forward to a paper by Queen's Will Quinn on what moved the nineteenth-century stock-market and Geraldine David's paper on art as a safe-haven investment during the First World War.
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.
