Prof. Sheila Dow was the external examiner of my PhD thesis. She is an extremely thoughtful and insightful economist. Well before the financial crisis, she was talking about the need for economists to think more about uncertainty - there are many things in life we cannot measure or quantify. In the video below, she talks about uncertainty, the financial crisis and regulation among other things.
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.