Events

Andrew Odlyzko Public Talk (21 Oct)

Many sources, including scholarly ones, claim that investors in the Railway Mania had no rational grounds for their profit expectations. In fact, they had available to them a systematic demand estimation methodology that was required by Parliament. This methodology had proved spectacularly accurate during the smaller railway mania of the 1830s, the only instance that has been found of accurate demand prediction for a revolutionary technology. However, this method was based on several false assumptions, and had that been understood, the investment disaster of the Railway Mania could have been predicted beforehand.