Is the continued sluggishness of the world's advanced economies a result of the financial crisis or is it a crisis in innovation? Has the financial crisis exposed a deeper malaise in advanced economies in that they are no longer making technological breakthroughs? Since the Industrial Revolution, economic growth has been spurred on by large technological breakthroughs - think steam, railways, the telegraph, electricity, the combustion engine, flight, chemical engineering, the computer, and the Internet. But have we run out of innovation with the result that economic growth will stagnate? Click here to read an op-ed piece by Kenneth Rogoff on this issue (hat tip: Graham Brownlow). Rogoff argues that the malaise is due to the financial crisis not an innovation 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.