[...]... between asset-price bubbles and high trading volume is one of the most intriguing pieces of empirical evidence concerning bubbles and must be accounted in any theoretical attempt to understand these speculative episodes 2.2 BUBBLES’ IMPLOSION AND INCREASES IN ASSET SUPPLY The South Sea Bubble lasted less than a year, but in that short period there was a huge increase in the supply of joint-stock company... al (2009) to control for cross-sectional differences in risk and liquidity and time variations in China’s risk and riskpremium They find that A-share turnover is significantly positively correlated with the A-B share premium, and in fact 20% of that premium can be “explained” by turnover variation On the other hand, B-share turnover had a positive association with the A-B premium, albeit not statistically... in trading volume As we argue in section 2.1, the connection between high trading volume and bubbles is a well-established, stylized fact This relationship between bubbles and trading distinguishes models of bubbles based on heterogeneous beliefs and cost asymmetries from “rational bubble” theories.4 A rational bubble is characterized by a continuous rise in an asset’s price Investors are content to... the South Sea Bubble, the extraordinary rise of stock prices during the roaring twenties, the Internet bubble, and the recent credit bubble I have already provided a short description of the South Sea Bubble and will assume that readers are familiar with a basic outline of the latter three episodes 2.1 BUBBLES AND TRADING VOLUME Carlos et al (2006) document that trading on Bank of England stock rose... studied six cases of spinoffs during that bubble—episodes when publicly traded companies did an equity carve-out by selling a fraction of a subsidiary to the market via an initial public offering (IPO), and announced a plan to spin off the remaining shares of the subsidiary to the parent-company shareholders A well-known example was Palm and 3Com Palm, which made hand-held personal organizers, was owned... because they believe that they are compensated for any risk of the bubble bursting by a suitable expected rate of price increase In contrast to models based on heterogeneous beliefs and costly short-selling, rational bubble theories fail to explain the association between bubbles and high trading volume and cannot be invoked to explain bubbles in assets that have final payoffs at a maturity date T, such... examined the wording of the Bubble Act of 1720, in which Parliament banned joint-stock companies not authorized by Royal Charter or the extension of corporate charters into new ventures, and the historical evidence on interests and discourses, and concluded that “the [Bubble Act] was a special-interest legislation for the [South Sea Company], which controlled its framing and its passage.” In any case,... have a AAA rating Lower-rated tranches of CDOs could then be combined to serve as collateral for the tranches of a CDO-squared, and lowerrated tranches of a CDO-squared could be combined with other securities to serve as collateral for the tranches of a CDO-cubed, and so on The high prices commanded by the instruments resulting from this securitization process increased the demand by issuers for residential... less-than-prime mortgage loans, and the combined annual subprime and Alt-A origination grew from an estimated $171 billion in 2002 to $877 billion in 2005, an annualized growth rate of 72%.24 Several developments added dramatically to the effective supply of securities backed by housing-related assets In the summer of 2005, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) created a standardized... the implosion of the South Sea and dotcom bubbles.26 2.3 ASSET PRICE BUBBLES AND THE ARRIVAL OF “NEW TECHNOLOGIES” Asset price bubbles tend to appear in periods of excitement about innovations The stock market bubble of the 1920s was driven primarily by the new technology stocks of the time, namely the automobile, aircraft, motion picture, and radio industries; the dotcom bubble has an obvious connection . Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2014 Columbia University Press All rights reserved E-ISBN 97 8-0 -2 3 1-5 376 3-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scheinkman, José Alexandre. Speculation, trading,. lecture I adopt an alternative approach. I start with a more precise model of asset prices that allows for divergence between asset prices and fundamental valuation and that has additional implications. Theorem, and includes additional papers and an introduction by Prasanta K. Pattanaik. For the third lecture, we were pleased to have José Scheinkman speak on speculative trading and bubbles.