José A. Scheinkman is the Edwin W. Rickert Professor of Economics at Columbia University and the Theodore Wells '29 Professor of Economics Emeritus at Princeton University. He is best known for his work on dynamic optimization, oligopoly theory, nonlinear dynamics, social interactions and bubbles in financial markets. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sandy Grossman is an American economist and hedge fund manager specializing in quantitative finance. He has published widely in leading economic and business journals, including American Economic Review, Journal of Econometrics, Econometrica, and Journal of Finance, and is chairman and CEO of QFS Asset Management. Patrick Bolton is the Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and a member of the Committee on Global Thought. He is also codirector of the Center for Contracts and Economic Organization at the Columbia Law School. His areas of interest are corporate finance, banking, sovereign debt, political economy, and law and economics.

Foreword, by Kenneth J. ArrowAcknowledgments, by Joseph E. StiglitzIntroduction, by Joseph E. StiglitzSpeculation, Trading, and Bubbles, by José A. ScheinkmanAppendix: A Formal ModelCommentary, by Patrick BoltonCommentary, by Sanford J. GrossmanCommentary, by Kenneth J. ArrowDiscussionNotesReferencesNotes on ContributorsIndex

The history of financial markets is full of moments in which asset prices inflate far beyond their intrinsic value. These events are commonly called bubbles, and in this book, José A. Scheinkman and other top economists offer new explanations for this phenomenon. Scheinkman discusses some stylized facts concerning bubbles, such as high trading volume and the coincidence between bubbles implosion and increases in supply, and he develops a model for bubbles based on differences in beliefs among investors that explains these observations. Sandy Grossman and Patrick Bolton offer commentaries onNations Scheinkmans work, investigating factors that contribute to bubbles, such as excessive leverage, overconfidence, mania, and panic in speculative markets. Kenneth J. Arrow and Joseph E. Stiglitz add introductory material contextualizing Scheinkmans findings.