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An Historical Perspective on Speculative Bubbles and Financial Crises: Tulipmania and the South Sea Bubble

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What Global Economic Crisis?

Abstract

The rapid pace of globalization over the last decade or so, together with the deregulation of financial markets, has raised concerns about the increasing fragility of the world financial markets. However, as Kindleberger (1996) has shown in his Manias, Panics and Crashes, the problems of the instability of financial assets and commodities may be traced back to the seventeenth century. He cites numerous examples of rapid increases in prices being followed by an even quicker collapse. Such an event, when the price of an asset (or commodity) increases rapidly solely because investors expect it to happen, is termed a ‘speculative bubble’.1

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© 2001 Michelle Baddeley and John McCombie

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Baddeley, M., McCombie, J. (2001). An Historical Perspective on Speculative Bubbles and Financial Crises: Tulipmania and the South Sea Bubble. In: Arestis, P., Baddeley, M., McCombie, J. (eds) What Global Economic Crisis?. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333992746_11

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