Finance/History: Is This Time Different? Lessons From The History Of Financial Crises with Professor Adrian Bell and Dr Tony Moore from The Henley Business School, The University of Reading

This webinar will explore historical financial crises to see if a better understanding of the past can illuminate the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8. In particular, Professor Adrian Bell and Dr Tony Moore will focus on financial market bubbles and financial crises to investigate parallels.

The session will be highly interactive with each school group presenting their thoughts and findings related to a particular historical financial crisis.

Through discussion of these presentations Adrian and Tony will address the following questions:

– Are historical crises relevant to today?

– Do they help explain 2007/8 or have circumstances changed too much?

Session Format

– Brief framing lecture (5 minutes)

– Pre-prepared student group presentations:

1. student group discussion 1 (based on the pre-reading) –summarise their understanding of Tulip mania (5 minutes)
2. student group discussion 2 (based on the pre-reading) – summarise their understanding of the South Sea bubble (5 minutes)
3. student group discussion 3 (based on the pre-reading) – summarise their understanding of the Wall Street Crash (5 minutes)
4. student group discussion 4 (based on the pre-reading) – summarise their understanding of the Railway bubble in the 19^th Century (5 minutes)

– Summary of student comments/draw out key observations (15 minutes)

Lecturer Biographies (Please Click): Professor Adrian Bell and Dr Tony Moore

Suitable For: Year 12s and Year 13s studying or thinking about studying Finance, History, Economics, Economic History.

Preparation/Pre-Reading: To prepare for the webinar, student groups participating from each school/college are asked to prepare a 5 minute presentation relating to a particular historical financial crisis. The crisis will be allocated to your school/college as you sign up to take part in the webinar, along with a few selected sources.

The presentation will concentrate on your assigned event and its particular historical context.  Adrian and Tony will draw out parallels at the end of the session.

Groups could use these questions to help frame their research and presentation:

– What happened and what was the cause?

– Why the event happened?

– Was the event a financial market bubble?

– What was the impact domestically / internationally?

– What was done to make sure it couldn’t happen again?

Students may use PowerPoint slides provided they are made available by 15th November.

The IT Setup: The setup is similar to Skype, using a pc and webcam, although students take part as a group with the image projected on a whiteboard rather than as individuals in front of lots of pcs. Dedicated videoconferencing equipment is also compatible if available to the school. We will work with your IT department to ensure everything is set up and working prior to the event. We are looking for no more than four schools/colleges to take part in this event to maintain the interactive nature of the experience.

Booking a Place: If you have a group of students that you would like to take part in this event, please contact us via email or via the contact form at the top right of this webpage (or at the bottom if you are on a mobile device). Subject to availability we will book a place for you.