Collective Hallucinations and Inefficient Markets- The British Railway Mania of the 1840s

TL;DR — Andrew Odlyzko’s 322-page study of the 1840s British railway bubble, arguing investors ignored simple, public arithmetic that showed the lines could never pay.

How much weight it carries: A long, carefully sourced economic history working paper; widely cited in bubble debates.

Where this came from

• Will Manidis’s “most underrated PDF” thread, July 2023 — routing record: The Most Underrated PDF on the Internet (July 2023)

322 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.