The correlation between manic skyscraper building booms and economic crashes – most recently seen in Dubai during the financial crisis – was popularised in 1999 with the release of the "Skyscraper Index" by the Hong Kong-based property analyst Andrew Lawrence "Is China building its way to a bubble? It may have started with the Tower of Babel, but over the past 140 years, there appears to be an unhealthy correlation between building the world's next tallest building and an impending financial crisis," Mr Lawrence, of Barclays Captial, wrote in a report in January.