Yesterday I had the privilege of giving a talk on my book Banking in Crisis to a packed audience at the Bank of England. The Bank has always taken banking history seriously. For example, it has commissioned several histories over the past 70 years - the most recent being Forrest Capie's Bank of England. The Bank is also holding a series of roundtables on past banking crises. I attended the first one of these yesterday, which was on the City of Glasgow crash. Charles Goodhart, Forrest Capie and I sat as external contributors to the roundtable and we were very impressed by the work done by the four economists who spoke about the City of Glasgow crisis.
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.