A special issue of the Journal of Financial Stability, edited by George Selgin, has been published which examines past and present alternatives to the Federal Reserve system. Notable contributions to the the special issue include Matthew Jaremski (on clearinghouses as credit regulators), Hugh Rockoff (on Sprague and the founding of the Fed), Lawrence H. White (on returning to a commodity standard), Scott Sumner (on Nominal GDP futures targeting) and Gerald Dwyer (on Bitcoin).
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.