Major bubble episodes are rare events. In this paper, we examine what factors might cause some asset price bubbles to become very large. We recreate, in a laboratory setting, some of the specific institutional features investors in the South Sea Company faced in 1720. Several factors have been...

I. FINANCIAL INTERMEDIARIES IN EUROPE -- Markets and institutions in the rise of London as a financial center in the seventeenth century Larry Neal, Stephen Quinn -- Paris Bourse, 1724-1814: experiments in microstructure Eugene N. White -- No exit: notarial bankruptcies and the evolution of...