A mechanism leading from bubbles to crashes: the case of Japan's land market

In this study, we investigate quantitatively statistical properties of a ensemble of land prices in Japan in the period from 1981 to 2002, corresponding to a period of bubbles and crashes. We found that the tail of the complementary cumulative distribution function of the ensemble of land prices in the high price range is well described by a power-law distribution, P(S>x)∼x-α, and furthermore that as the power-law exponents α approached unity, bubbles collapsed.