Although the British Railway Mania has been described as one of the greatest bubbles in history, it has been largely neglected by academics. This paper attempts to redress this neglect by creating a daily stock price index for the 1843-50 period and by assessing the contribution of the many...

Historical ‘bubbles’ are often attributed to mispricing, but the empirical analysis of such episodes has been limited. This paper examines a notable but academically neglected period, known as the British Railway Mania, using a new dataset and a cross-sectional methodology which is unique to...

During the British Railway Mania of the 1840s the promotion and construction of new railways increased dramatically. These new projects were generally financed by shares with uncalled capital, which allowed investors to make payments on an instalment basis over a period of several years. There...

Historical ‘bubbles’ are often attributed to mispricing, but the empirical analysis of such episodes has been limited. This paper examines a notable but academically neglected period, known as the British Railway Mania, using a new dataset and a cross-sectional methodology which is unique to...

This paper analyses the relationship between leverage and asset price ‘bubbles’ by examining an historical episode known as the British Railway Mania. During this period there was a substantial expansion in the number of railways promoted, most of which were financed by shares which could be...

Although historical asset price ‘bubbles’ are often attributed to irrationality, the empirical analysis of such episodes has been limited. This paper examines a period known as the British Railway Mania, using a new dataset and a cross-sectional methodology which is unique to the study of...

This paper analyses the relationship between leverage and asset price bubbles. During an important historical bubble there was a substantial expansion in the number of railways promoted, most of which were financed by shares which could be purchased on an instalment basis. An analysis of a new...

Although historical asset price ‘bubbles’ are often attributed to irrationality, the empirical analysis of such episodes has been limited. The results presented in this paper suggest that during an historical price reversal, investors successfully incorporated forecasts of short-term...

The rationality of investors during asset price bubbles has been the subject of considerable debate. An analysis of the British Railway Mania, which occurred in the 1840s, suggests that investors may have been myopic, as their expectations were only accurate in the short-term, but they remained...

In the early stock market in London there were substantial risks of non-payment and fraud. (Mortimer, 1801) According to Hobbesian theory, we would expect stock markets to develop only after government has implemented rules and regulations to eliminate these problems. The historical account,...