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Peter M. Garber
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Famous First Bubbles: The Fundamentals of Early Manias Paperback – October 1, 2001

by Peter M. Garber (Author)
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 14 ratings
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The jargon of economics and finance contains numerous colorful terms for market-asset prices at odds with any reasonable economic explanation. Examples include "bubble," "tulipmania," "chain letter," "Ponzi scheme," "panic," "crash," "herding," and "irrational exuberance." Although such a term suggests that an event is inexplicably crowd-driven, what it really means, claims Peter Garber, is that we have grasped a near-empty explanation rather than expend the effort to understand the event.

In this book Garber offers market-fundamental explanations for the three most famous bubbles: the Dutch Tulipmania (1634-1637), the Mississippi Bubble (1719-1720), and the closely connected South Sea Bubble (1720). He focuses most closely on the Tulipmania because it is the event that most modern observers view as clearly crazy. Comparing the pattern of price declines for initially rare eighteenth-century bulbs to that of seventeenth-century bulbs, he concludes that the extremely high prices for rare bulbs and their rapid decline reflects normal pricing behavior. In the cases of the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles, he describes the asset markets and financial manipulations involved in these episodes and casts them as market fundamentals.

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  1. Print length
    176 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    MIT Press
  4. Publication date
    October 1, 2001
  5. Grade level
    12 and up
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. Dimensions
    7.68 x 4.86 x 0.53 inches
  8. ISBN-10
    0262571536
  9. ISBN-13
    978-0262571531
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This wonderful short book takes us behind the curtains of financial folly. It skillfully offers both anecdote and analysis of events that we may be reliving just now."--Rudi Dornbusch, Ford Professor of Economics and International Management, MIT

& quot; This wonderful short book takes us behind the curtains of financial folly. It skillfully offers both anecdote and analysis of events that we may be reliving just now.& quot; --Rudi Dornbusch, Ford Professor of Economics and International Management, MIT

" This wonderful short book takes us behind the curtains of financial folly. It skillfully offers both anecdote and analysis of events that we may be reliving just now." --Rudi Dornbusch, Ford Professor of Economics and International Management, MIT

--Rudi Dornbusch, Ford Professor of Economics and International Management, MIT

About the Author

Peter M. Garber is Global Strategist at Global Markets Research of Deutsche Bank.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ MIT Press; Reprint edition (October 1, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262571536
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262571531
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.68 x 4.86 x 0.53 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 14 ratings

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Peter M. Garber

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3.7 out of 5 stars
14 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Abacus
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent debunking of the myth about tulipmania
    Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2003
    The author does an excellent job debunking the myth about the Dutch tulipmania from 1634 to 1637. He conducted detailed economics and historical research, and uncovered that just about everything about tulipmania as described in Charles Mackay book "Extraordinary popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" is either inaccurate, or exaggerated. The Dutch never mortgaged their entire properties for a single bulb. Also, Holland did not suffer a depression after the tulip market crashed. According to the author, very little net wealth was actually wiped out. Instead, the price of rare tulips was driven by rational economic considerations reflecting the short supply and the rising demand for this rare tulip bulb type. The price of these tulip bulbs at anyone time reflected expected investment returns from investors. Other economists have also documented that the price of tulip bulbs did go back up to similar level several centuries later associated with favorable economics change in this market.
    The author goes on to further explain the rational economics fundamentals behind the Mississippi Bubble of 1719-1720 resulting from an attempt to swap French government debt for equity in a private company, financed by printing paper money. He similarly explains out in similar economics terms the South Sea Bubble of 1720 which was the equivalent of a leveraged buyout of the national debt of Great Britain. Both investment schemes ultimately collapsed, but their respective economics and strong government support at the onset gave these investment propositions very strong fundamentals. These investments are not so different than investments today in GSEs like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Sallie Mae. Because of accounting irregularities, the stocks in these GSEs have recently taken a beating. But, there is no ground for talking about a GSE stock bubble.
    The author has strong credentials to support his iconoclastic thesis that is not that well known by the economics establishment. He is a global strategist at Global Markets Research at Deutsche Bank and Professor of Economics at Brown University.
    The Internet bubble has often been compared to the three investment bubbles mentioned above. Sadly enough, internet stock investors were by far the most foolish among investors of these four different investment bubbles. This is because at the onset the fundamentals behind internet stocks were far weaker and speculative than the ones associated with the investments associated with any of the three other bubbles.
    9 people found this helpful
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  • J R Kinnett, III
    4.0 out of 5 stars It's a keeper. Glad that I read it.
    Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2021
    As a diligent investor constantly seeking truth about why things happened, this book is refreshing. Thank you, Mr. Garber.

    You have heard that some people's stories must be "taken with a grain of salt." For the fine stories in "Manias, Panics, and Crashes" and "Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds", "Famous First Bubbles" is that grain of salt.

    Amidst the informative truths of the aforementioned books, Peter Garber removes exaggerations and falsehoods like a surgeon removing buckshot from a wound. Not necessarily a pleasant task, but afterword the reader feels much stronger with a grasp on the truth of some crazy historical economic events.

    Fortunately, this dry-yet-valuable read moves quickly to its key conclusions that (A) modern use of the term "bubble" is frequently just "a self-deluding attempt to say something more than a confession of confusion", and (B) "the goal here is to find [reasonable] explanations" for what appears to be aberrant market behavior.

    It's a keeper. Glad that I read it. Glad to be done. I'll keep it on the shelf next to Kindleberger's "Manias, Panics and Crashes."
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  • R. J. H. Boere
    2.0 out of 5 stars shattered bubble book
    Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    I did not finish this book entirely but I do not like it much. It is written as if it is a scietific study with al ot of references to books that may not be available anymore. It has no scientific value because it reworks the data of others and no new insights are gained.
    As an inforative book it misses anything that you can call a storyline. Only the part about the Mississipi bubble is readeable.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Vilimir Yordanov
    4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not very academic
    Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2003
    Episodes as the Tulip Mania, The South See Bubble, the Crash of 1929 are going to leave a permanent trace in financial science. So they deserve close investigation. The Author has achieved to make really a very interesting and vivid one. His ideas are very controversial, but exactly they make the book amusing. However, I haven't seen anywhere in the book a formula, integral, etc. Perhaps the purpose was to give more informal treatment of the bubbles phenomena, but it will be very interesting a formal one to be made in future by fitting concrete rational expectations models in the historical data.
    Vilimir Yordanov, Bulgaria
    2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Georgios Samakovitis
    5.0 out of 5 stars Of folktale and early economic experiments
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Garber provides a rather unconventional take of the most talked about economic phenomenon by discussing mainly the three most popular occurrences of financial and other asset inflations, popularised through the concept of “bubbles”, to later seek relevance of these to the 1998-2000 frenzy. Written before the dot com bust, apparently the book reflects the author’s experience with oversized valuations present at the time, yet still it provides a rather sober contribution to our understanding of mechanisms (economic, political and psychological, as he underlined) that cause unjustified increases and, arguably equally unjustified plunges, in asset prices.
    Garber purports the Tulip-mania, the Mississippi And the South Sea bubbles to be merely outcomes of socioeconomic incidents and early attempts to unregulated financial innovation (as in the case of tulip trade) and political manipulations (as in the other two cases), as markets are most often weaponised in the hands of governments to promote specific policies. That political motive, Garber contends, has been behind at least the two latter bubbles by the governments of France and England respectively.
    The point that Garber achieved to make in his book is that very much of what was later popularised as nearly folk tale, and surprisingly permeated the more serious academic literature (primarily in the absence of evidence or scarcity of it, coupled with the necessity to hinge upon stories of financial folly) has largely been the result of either private capital risky undertakings, in an all but well-regulated financial services environment, or government led macroeconomic experimentation that did not turn well. Bubbles, he maintains, appear as malign occurrences and madness-ridden acts only when such experiments fail; they are otherwise perceived as audacious efforts that may even be construed as genius, bu tit is the ex-post facto assessment that ends-up labelling them as unnecessary and unsubstantiated.
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  • Amazon Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
    Reviewed in Canada on August 20, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Very detailed accounts.
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