Can limits to arbitrage explain historical asset price reversals? During the "British Bicycle Mania" of 1896-1898, cycle share prices rose by 200 per cent before falling 76 per cent from their peak value. This paper argues that arbitrage during this episode was limited by the risk of being...

Technological revolutions are often accompanied by substantial stock price reversals, but previous literature has produced competing explanations for why this is the case. This paper brings new evidence to this debate using data from the innovation-driven British Bicycle Mania of 1895-1900, in...

Using a new weekly blue-chip index, this paper investigates the causes of stock price movements on the London market between 1823 and 1870. We find that economic fundamentals explain about 15 per cent of weekly and 34 per cent of monthly variation in share prices. Contemporary press reporting...

Bubbles have become ubiquitous. This ubiquity has stimulated research over the past three decades into bubbles in history. In this article, we provide a systematic overview of research into historical bubbles. Our analysis reveals that there is no coherent approach to the study of bubbles and...

Research on the financial events of 1720 in Britain has overwhelmingly focused on the South Sea Company, but price movements were much more dramatic in the shares of the newly incorporated London Assurance (LA) Company. This paper uses unique archival material on the London Assurance to address...

Clientele-based theories explaining asset price bubbles are often difficult to test because the identities of investors cannot easily be tracked over time. This paper tests these theories using a hand-collected sample of 12,000 investors during an asset price reversal in the shares of British...

Clientele-based theories explaining asset price bubbles are often difficult to test because the identities of investors cannot easily be tracked over time. This paper tests these theories using a hand-collected sample of 12,000 investors during an asset price reversal in the shares of British...