The point was that it wasn't caused by government regulation. And it was a quip, anyway, pointing out that even late renaissance "investors" in a completely new market would see a boom/bust cycle.

Please read the article, it explicitly states that the Dutch tulip boom/bust was caused by government regulation.

> Earl Thompson, formerly of UCLA, takes a different approach. He reckons that the market for tulips was an efficient response to changing financial regulation—in particular, the anticipated government conversion of futures contracts into options contracts. This ruse was dreamt up by government officials, who themselves were keen to make a quick buck from the tulip trade.

> In plain English, investors who had bought the right to buy tulips in the future were no longer obliged to buy them. If the market price was not high enough for investors’ liking, they could pay a small fine and cancel the contract. The balance between risk and reward in the tulip market was skewed massively in investors’ favour. The inevitable result was a huge increase in tulip options prices. (The price of options collapsed when the government saw sense and cancelled the contracts.)

Of course The Economist thinks markets are perfect and government regulation is to blame for everything. Spreading that idea is why the magazine exists. If the article was promoting a different theory then it would never have been published in The Economist.

I'm not following, nowhere in that article does it say there was no boom/bust of tulips.

The article states 1) it was a boom/bust and 2) the boom/bust was caused by government regulation.

It states that Tulipmania was a rational response to anticipated government regulation that would let investors cancel their futures contracts for only a small fee.

Only an economist could look at the tulip 'incident' and not see a speculative bubble