The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded yesterday to Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller for "their empirical analysis of asset prices". For some, Fama will be controversial pick. But for my money, Shiller deserves his prize for his work on irrational exuberance and animal spirits rather than his 1981 asset pricing paper. Click here for a piece at Bloomberg, which briefly outlines the contribution of the three laureates.
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.