Financial instability can have large adverse effects on an economy. One major cause of instability is asset price bubbles. This paper starts by considering how such bubbles can arise due to the expansion of money and credit. The ways in which subsequent financial instability occurs are then...

The financial sector is heavily regulated in order to prevent financial crises. The recent crisis showed how ineffective this regulation and other types of government intervention were in achieving this aim. We argue that the crisis was primarily caused by housing price bubbles. These occurred...

In a financial market where traders are risk averse and short lived, and prices are noisy, asset prices today depend on the average expectation today of tomorrow's price. Thus (iterating this relationship) the date 1 price equals the date 1 average expectation of the date 2 average expectation...