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Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of behavior toward those choices might not be the ones we were all taught, and still teach, and that subjective risk perceptions might not accord with expert assessments of probabilities. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the need to jettison naive notions of revealed preferences, according to which every choice by a subject expresses her objective function, as behavioral evidence forces us to confront pervasive inconsistencies and noise in a typical individual’s choice data. A principled account of errant choice must be built into models used for identification and estimation. These challenges demand close attention to the methodological claims often used to justify policy interventions. They also require, we argue, closer attention by economists to relevant contributions from cognitive science. We propose that a quantitative application of the “intentional stance” of Dennett provides a coherent, attractive and general approach to behavioral welfare economics.

The use of behavioral insights and experimental methods has recently gained momentum among health policy-makers. There is a tendency, however, to reduce behavioral insights applications in health to “nudges,” and to reduce experiments in health to “randomized controlled trials” (RCTs). We argue that there is much more to behavioral insights and experimental methods in health economics than just nudges and RCTs. First, there is a broad and rich array of complementary experimental methods spanning the lab to the field, and all of them could prove useful in health economics. Second, there are a host of challenges in health economics, policy, and management where the application of behavioral insights and experimental methods is timely and highly promising. We illustrate this point by describing applications of experimental methods and behavioral insights to one specific topic of fundamental relevance for health research and policy: the experimental elicitation and econometric estimation of risk and time preferences. We start by reviewing the main methods of measuring risk and time preferences in health. We then focus on the “behavioral econometrics” approach to jointly elicit and estimate risk and time preferences, and we illustrate its state-of-the-art applications to health.

OWING to the comparatively early date in the year of the Library Association Conference, this number of THE LIBRARY WORLD is published so that it may be in the hands of our readers before it begins. The official programme is not in the hands of members at the time we write, but the circumstances are such this year that delay has been inevitable. We have dwelt already on the good fortune we enjoy in going to the beautiful West‐Country Spa. At this time of year it is at its best, and, if the weather is more genial than this weather‐chequered year gives us reason to expect, the Conference should be memorable on that account alone. The Conference has always been the focus of library friendships, and this idea, now that the Association is so large, should be developed. To be a member is to be one of a freemasonry of librarians, pledged to help and forward the work of one another. It is not in the conference rooms alone, where we listen, not always completely awake, to papers not always eloquent or cleverly read, that we gain most, although no one would discount these; it is in the hotels and boarding houses and restaurants, over dinner tables and in the easy chairs of the lounges, that we draw out really useful business information. In short, shop is the subject‐matter of conference conversation, and only misanthropic curmudgeons think otherwise.

HARROGATE will be notable as the venue of the Conference in one or two ways that distinctive. The Association Year is now to begin on January 1st and not in September as heretofore; and, in consequence, there will be no election of president or of new council until the end of the year. The Association's annual election is to take place in November, and the advantages of this arrangement must be apparent to everyone who considers the matter. Until now the nominations have been sent out at a time when members have been scattered to all parts of the country on holiday, and committees of the Council have been elected often without the full consideration that could be given in the more suitable winter time. In the circumstances, at Harrogate the Chair will still be occupied by Sir Henry Miers, who has won from all librarians and those interested in libraries a fuller measure of admiration, if that were possible, than he possessed before he undertook the presidency. There will be no presidential address in the ordinary sense, although Sir Henry Miers will make a speech in the nature of an address from the Chair at one of the meetings. What is usually understood by the presidential address will be an inaugural address which it is hoped will be given by Lord Irwin. The new arrangement must bring about a new state of affairs in regard to the inaugural addresses. We take it that in future there will be what will be called a presidential address at the Annual Meeting nine months after the President takes office. He will certainly then be in the position to review the facts of his year with some knowledge of events; he may chronicle as well as prophesy.

THE provisional programme of this year's L.A. Conference at Southport on September 20–23 is now in our hands. The theme, the library and the community, is the perennial one for our conferences and, in that, is blameless ; everything will depend on the handling of the subjects. No one who considers what is promised can accuse the Council of the L.A. of a partial view of the field, because whole areas are given representation in general sessions and if, as we expect from such writers as Messrs. R. O. MacKenna, W. S. Haigh, D. J. Foskett and F. C. Francis, the papers have the requisite range, the Proceedings will prove to be a comprehensive Statement of library practice today. All are well‐tried speakers and amongst them we anticipate, for example, a model paper from Mr. Haigh, who was frank in his view of the endurance required of the listeners at Hastings. The gifted Editor of The Assistant Librarian, Mr. A. C. Jones, who, unfortunately for us all, is relinquishing that office, is to occupy the A.A.L. with the assistant librarian in the community, and county libraries are to be represented by papers by Mr. B. Oliph Smith and Mr. H. Thompson at their own Section meetings. University libraries again come into the picture at theirs with a discussion opened by Dr. L. W. Sharp. Mystery is suggested by Mr. B. C. Vickery's “Tower of Babel: the language barrier in science” which seems to indicate some form of Interglossa or, possibly, since he is an enthusiast for Dr. Ranganathan, that teacher's Meta‐language. It certainly would be an achievement if whenever a scientist used a word it could be made to convey the same thing in every reader's mind. The Youth Section will listen to that practical teacher and thinker, Mr. J. F. Wolfenden; and the Annual Lecturer on Wednesday, September 21, will be by Mr. J. L. Longland, the chief education officer of Derbyshire, whose co‐operative sympathy and support was no doubt of great service to Mr. Edgar Osborne in the organizing of the most fully co‐ordinate county service in this country. Five British “internes” will render account of their experiences in America, under the chairmanship of Mr. J. C. Harrison, we hope to the encouragement of others of us “to go and do likewise.” Nothing better for the creation of fresh enthusiasms and for a high international level of library practice in all its variants can be imagined than this prolonged employment in the libraries of other countries ; every librarian should encourage it to the limit of his means and feel, as we do, gratitude to Messrs. Sydney and Harrison for acting as the selection committee so far as British candidate “internes” are concerned.

THE article which we publish from the pen of Mr. L. Stanley Jast is the first of many which we hope will come from his pen, now that he has release from regular library duties. Anything that Mr. Jast has to say is said with originality even if the subject is not original; his quality has always been to give an independent and novel twist to almost everything he touches. We think our readers will find this to be so when he touches the important question of “The Library and Leisure.”

The linkage between diversification and performance has puzzled scholars for decades. A vast amount of empirical studies, together with the help of meta-analyses condensing diverse results, established a widely shared understanding that related diversification leads to superior firm performance. The main rationale for this finding is that relatedness within a company’s portfolio of businesses allows the company to achieve synergies by sharing or transferring resources. Although the predominant importance of related diversification seems generally accepted, scholars raise severe concerns about our ability to precisely define and measure relatedness. In most studies, traditional measures of diversification such as the Berry index are used, which assess relatedness from a product/market perspective. However, these measures face strong criticisms for their low degree of content validity. So if we doubt our understanding of relatedness, how can we agree on the performance effect of related diversification? To reassure our understanding of the diversification-performance linkage, this study critically reflects upon the underlying phenomenon of relatedness. By compiling and evaluating the different perspectives of relatedness with their heterogeneous conceptualizations and measures, this study supports the view that the multi-facetted nature of relatedness can only be captured inadequately so far. Moreover, most prior work mainly focuses on synergy potential rather than on the realization of synergies, thereby neglecting a mechanism that may have an important bearing on the performance effects of diversification.

THE Manchester School of Librarianship was founded in October 1946, one of the original five schools opened in the autumn of that year. It was attached to the Department of Industrial Administration in the Manchester College of Science and Technology and was thus something of an exception, as the majority of schools of librarianship were attached to Colleges of Commerce or general Colleges of Further Education. As accommodation was very limited in this rapidly expanding college, the then City Librarian of Manchester, Charles Nowell, kindly offered the use of two rooms in the Central Library, so after a brief period in the College building, the students were moved to the Central Library, though the School remained administratively a part of the College. Many former students must have memories of those two curving rooms, the Manchester Room and the Lancashire Room, with their old‐fashioned school desks.

The argument that applications of social network research tools and theories to stakeholder research will advance our understanding of how organizations should and do interact with their stakeholders and how stakeholders influence organizations has been well known for over 15 years. However, the integration of social network analysis and stakeholder research has been limited to date. To motivate stakeholder network research, I illustrate the similarities and complementarities between these research streams, arguing that the social network perspective tackles weaknesses in stakeholder models supporting the creation of more fruitful models of organization–stakeholder environments. I illustrate how stakeholder power and legitimacy, and focal organization obligations can be better modeled theoretically and measured empirically using social network concepts and techniques.

In our last number we presented an article by Mr. J. C. Harrison of the Manchester School of Librarianship on “The Library Schools and a Historical Dilemma” in which professional education and examination policy were reviewed. The following comments are to hand on the article.