Steve Jobs, the founder and former CEO of Apple, died this morning. He has rightly been described as a visionary and genius. Apple is one of the world's largest and most profitable corporations thanks to Steve Jobs. This raises a whole bunch of questions of interest to economists. First, are public companies which are run by their founders more successful than those run by professional managers? Second, how do public companies address succession issues whenever a founder CEO steps down? Third, how can an economy encourage innovation and innovators? For an interesting view on this from an historical perspective, see this recent paper by Tom Nicholas and others.
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.