This week's Economist has a special essay on financial crises, which argues that financial systems are not just prone to crises, but that they are shaped by them. The big punchline in the essay is that government plays too large a role in financial systems, which actually makes them more unstable. In Banking in Crisis, my forthcoming book, I argue that this is only a part of the explanation as to why banking systems are prone to crises.
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.