Dr John Turner and Dr Will Quinn of Queen’s University Belfast have written a brilliant new book titled ‘Boom and Bust‘, which is a fascinating account of the ten bubbles in history occurring in the 19th century Australia to modern China.
In the words of the The Enlightened Economist:
Each episode is set in the context of a framework described in the first chapter, the Bubble Triangle. These are the three necessary conditions for a bubble to take off: good marketability of the assets involved; abundant money & credit; and large numbers of speculators. With these in place, they argue there are two potential sparks: technology (radio in the 1920s, bicycle innovations in the 1890s) or politics (often, governments seeking to engineer higher asset prices to meet a policy goal, such as encouraging home ownership (the early to mid 2000s) or reducing government debt (John Law in France in the 1760s).
Why We’re Polarized, the new book by the super awesome Ezra Klein, is an essential read on how a polarized media polarizes us.
Read an excerpt here.
econhistorienne.com 