One would think that economists would by now have already developed a solid grip on how financial bubbles form and how to measure and compare them. This is not the case. Despite the thousands of articles in the professional literature and the millions of times that the word bubble has been used in the business press, there still does not appear to be a cohesive theory or persuasive empirical approach with which to study bubble and crash conditions. This book presents what is meant to be a plausible and accessible descriptive theory and empirical approach to the analysis of such financial...