What causes market bubbles, and are we in one?

An all-star group of media economics experts gathered at the University of Navarra Dec. 13 and 14 to exchange ideas and research results on the role and behavior of media during periods of economic or financial boom and crash.

Their approaches were varied: historical, media effects, content analysis, journalistic practice, political economy, etc.

(The full program is here.)

Many of the presentations centered on media coverage of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and its impact in countries including Ireland, England, Greece, Spain, the U.S., the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. The papers provoked lively debate among the participants, since there was significant time between presentations for questions and comments.

The studies used ingenious research methods and rigorous statistical analysis to tease out surprising insights. I had the unenviable task of providing a summary at the end, on a Friday night, in just 10 minutes. So here is the cheeky result, with apologies to my learned colleagues:

Cause of bubbles: audiences
    •    Overwhelmed by complexity
    •    Uninterested in economics
    •    Ignorant
    •     . . . even willfully ignorant
    •    Lazy, complacent
    •    Delusional

Causes of bubbles: journalists
    •    Overwhelmed by complexity
    •    Lacking training in economics
    •    Excessive sourcing from handful of public officials and financial industry experts
    •    Excessive sourcing from charlatans posing as experts
    •    Overworked, underpaid, forced to write click bait
    •    Self-censorship, serving ownership interests
    •    Uninterested, ignorant
    •    Lazy, complacent
    •    Unethical
    •    Sometimes corrupt

What animals teach us about customer relations

Scientists and philosophers have spent a lot of their time and energy trying to describe what makes humans different from animals. So have economists.

Blue-striped cleaner wrasses at work. Photo by Gregory R. Mann

But it turns out that animals have economic market behaviors similar to humans, such as customer differentiation (a fish called the cleaner wrasse) and bidding out their labor (the paper wasp).

For this blog post I am indebted to Stephen J. Dubner's "The Invisible Paw" podcast. He interviewed a scientist who described how the cleaner wrasse, which removes parasites and dead scales from other fish, treats its "clients" in line with the principles of market economics. (Photo is from the WildCoastBlog).