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New Zealand reintroduced titular honours (i.e. knighthoods and damehoods) in 2009. We document the prevalence of knights and dames on the board of directors.

We use a probit regression to investigate what firm characteristics are significantly associated with having a knight or dame on the board of directors.

We find 19 of 112 companies have a knight or dame on the board. These companies are bigger and have larger and more independent boards than other companies. We also find a knight or dame is more likely to serve in companies that have higher dividend yields.

The generalisability of our results is limited by the small number of knights and dames on the boards of listed companies and our archival regression approach. Although we document an association, we cannot prove causation.

We show that directors with greater and easily visible reputational capital are more likely to supply their services to companies that mitigate risks to their reputation and protect minority shareholder interests.

A new database demonstrates that between 1600 and 1830, Parliament passed thousands of acts restructuring rights to real and equitable estates. These estate acts enabled individuals and families to sell, mortgage, lease, exchange, and improve land previously bound by landholding and inheritance laws. This essay provides a factual foundation for research on this important topic: the law and economics of property rights during the period preceding the Industrial Revolution. Tables present time-series, cross-sectional, and panel data that should serve as a foundation for empirical analysis. Preliminary analysis indicates ways in which this new evidence may shape our understanding of British economic and social history. The data demonstrate that Parliament facilitated the reallocation of resources to new and more productive uses by adapting property rights to modern economic conditions. Reallocation surged in the decades following the Glorious Revolution and was concentrated in areas undergoing urbanization and industrialization. The process was open to landowners of all classes, not just the privileged groups who sat in the Houses of Lords and Commons. Parliament's rhetoric about improving the realm appears to have been consistent with its actions concerning rights to land and resources.

The paper aims to examine whether and under what circumstances social status of chief executives can be associated with corporate financial decisions, in particular via risk aversion or risk loving to the extent of mergers and acquisitions.

The authors use mixed methods, drawing metrics of social status (acquired and ascribed) from anthropological and sociological research, applying these, and then using panel econometrics to check the statistical importance of the uncovered relationships.

The authors find in the paper that it is possible, for FTSE companies, to successfully measure and apply measures of social status from public records; they find strong evidence of a negative relationship between CEO ascribed and achieved social status and his or her acquisitiveness. However, the influence of achieved status appears to be more consistent and significant than that of the ascribed status, indicating its dominant role in determining overall attained status.

The research is limited in its data coverage, to FTSE members. However, it does show that it is possible to take useful and meaningful concepts from areas quite removed from traditional finance and to incorporate these into a traditional finance methodology.

The paper has practical implications for both aspirant and existing corporate officers and for investors.

Social status is omnipresent and poorly understood as a mitigator or enabler of financial transactions, although there is some evidence that it is important.

This research bridges a gap that has heretofore only been very sparsely mapped, and provides suggested routes for further research.

EVERY method employed by librar ns to bring books to the notice of readers may be justified It is thus desirable to devote an occasional issue of THE LIBRARY WORLD to this attractive subject. Our writers take differing views, but there is always a single aim in their work: to bring right book and reader into acquaintance. We might have to meet the challenge, which indeed one of our writers implies, that such book display may deflect the Library from its original, rightful purpose. Until these terms are defined such a challenge is a begging of the question. Often we have mentioned the question, For what public is the public library working? Was it intended to serve as an auxiliary, and then an extension, of the official education system? It has always indeed been more and less than that. Our founders were able to argue that libraries would withdraw men from beer and ill‐company, but from the first they probably failed to do that, and made their appeal to the intelligent elements in the community. As they developed and public education waxed, there grew up an enormous literature, available in early years in small quantity, the aim of which was entertainment only, and there survived—there survives still—a notion which was based on an earlier conception of books, that to read was somehow educative and virtuous, whatever was read. Librarians hold this notion in some measure to‐day, although the recent success of twopenny libraries which are mainly devoted to the entertainment type of literature must have made them revise the view somewhat.

The Library Association of Ireland issued last month the first number of An Leabharlann, their new official journal. The title, for those of us who do not speak the language of Erin, means The Library. It is an extremely interesting venture which will be followed by librarians on the mainland with sympathetic curiosity. In particular our readers would be interested in the first of a series of articles by Father Stephen J. Brown, S.J., on Book Selection. The worthy Father lectures on this subject at University College, Dublin, in the Library School. It is mainly concerned with what should not be selected, and deals in vigorous fashion with the menace of much of current published stuff. No doubt Father Brown will follow with something more constructive. Mr. T. E. Gay, Chairman of the Association, discusses the need for a survey of Irish libraries and their resources. We agree that it is necessary. The Net Books Agreement, the Council, Notes from the Provinces, and an article in Erse—which we honestly believe that most of our Irish friends can read—and an excellent broadcast talk on the Library and the Student by Miss Christina Keogh, the accomplished Librarian of the Irish Central Library, make up a quite attractive first number. A list of broadcast talks given by members of the Association is included.

Within tertiary education, service-learning can offer deeply engaging and transformational experiences for students, broadening their consideration of a host of social justice issues of our time, including diversity and inclusion. This chapter describes how service-learning interfaces with two areas in particular, both of which have wide-ranging public health implications and are generally misrepresented in public media: poverty and mental health. Representative studies are highlighted and case examples are presented in each domain, concluding with recommendations for future research. The authors argue that service-learning courses addressing social justice issues such as poverty and mental health can lead to deep learning in students if they are sequenced to include both direct service-learning that concretizes the issue and community-based research that highlights the public policy challenges and implications of addressing that issue systemically.

This bibliography is intended as a guide for librarians, scholars, students, and interested amateurs. It suggests what books or media would be an invaluable starting collection to understanding the Arthurian legend, which has been over a millennium in the making.