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Societies for the History of Economics

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Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
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Barkley Rosser <[log in to unmask]>
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Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:10:55 -0500
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The book by MacKay on Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is 
a classic masterpiece.  However, as a history of the tulipmania (only 
one of the various topics it covers) it is reported to be inaccurate 
in a number of counts, although due to its popularity some of those 
inaccurate tales have been picked up and widely repeated.  Among 
those supposedly untrue (at least according to Garber and some 
others) is that at the time of the peak of the bubble when a sailor 
on a ship ate a super expensive tulip bulb owned by a passenger, 
thinking it to be an onion.

Two other figures prior to 1987 who should probably be mentioned (I 
was unaware of James Steuart's writings on this topic), with me 
thinking that post-1987 writings should probably be viewed as 
"current" and not "history," would be Hyman Minsky and more recently 
Robert Shiller.  It was from Minsky's discussions that Kindleberger 
based his arguments as laid out in Manias, Panics, and Crashes, and 
they were friends.  Minsky in turn drew strongly on Keynes, but also 
on Fisher and John Stuart Mill, among some others.  His arguments are 
scattered through various writings of his from the 1960s to the 
1980s.  Shiller is essentially current, with a fresh book out with 
Akerlof on Animal Spirits, and his Irrational Exuberance very well 
done, but his first papers challenging the then ascendant rational 
agent orthodoxy that said there could be no bubbles began appearing in 1981.

Oh, and the disruptions described by Thomas Mun were associated with 
the crises ensuing from the beginning of the Thirty Years War.  An 
excellent summary of the history of bubbles can be found in Appendix 
B of Kindleberger's book, with more bubbles listed in the later 
editions.  In the fourth edition (2000) the list begins with the 
crash of the Hapsburg currency in 1618 at the beginning of that war.

Barkley Rosser

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