The recent economic crisis – already deservedly labeled the ‘great recession’ – continues to plague the health of the economy as a whole and has motivated us to probe its characteristic features and compare it to the typical economic downturn. Events during the boom and crash have been...

We report results from fifteen computerized double auctions with concurrent trading of two commodities. In contrast to prior experimental markets, buyers' demands are induced via CES earnings functions defined over the two traded goods, with a fiat money expenditure constraint. Sellers receive...

Asset market bubbles occur dependably in laboratory experiments. They have also been frequent in economic history, yet they do not usually bring the global economy to its knees. The ongoing Crash of 2008 was caused by the bursting of a housing bubble of unusual size, fed by a massive expansion...