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THE following abstract in tabular form has been prepared by some junior members of the Islington Public Libraries staff for the use of candidates in Section V. of the Library Association Examination. It does not pretend to do more than set out the chief provisions of the various Public Libraries Acts in a clear manner, as an aid to the memorization of the principal powers and duties conferred upon library authorities. The whole of the Acts can be purchased through any bookseller for 1s. 4½d., and every student of librarianship is advised to procure them.

CONFERENCES are becoming difficult. Recently the chairman of the Ray Committee remarked that there were too many of them, and added that if they were held in Wigan rather than Bournemouth or such places they would not be well attended. The assumption is that we attend them for our pleasure only. We do find pleasure in them, but any delegate who goes through a Library Association Conference has done a week's work more strenuous than most men do in their busiest business weeks. In fact he is worked much too hard. Sir William Ray is too experienced a public man not to know why an assembly of several thousands of persons cannot descend on places which are without accommodation. In any case the Library Association has met in recent years in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, which have their amenities but are not exactly pleasure resorts.

MID‐OCTOBER sees the activities of the library world in full swing. Meetings, committee discussions, schools at work, students busy with December and May examinations in view, and a host of occupations for the library worker. This year—for in a sense the library year begins in October—will be a busy one. For the Library Association Council there will be the onerous business of preparing a report on State Control; for libraries there will be the effort to retain readers in a land of increasing employment and reduced leisure; and for the students, as we have remarked in earlier issues, preparations for the new syllabus of examinations which becomes operative in 1938. It is a good month, too, to consider some phases of library work with children, “which,” to quote the L.A. Resolutions of 1917, “ought to be the basis of all other library work.”

The following list of contracts placed by the Air Ministry during June is extracted from the July issue of The Ministry of Labour Gazette:

OUR pages continue the discussion on book‐display, about which all has not been said by any means. The ingenious librarian will always sharpen his wits upon the attracting of readers, and the main problem in the matter is merely: what sort of reader is it most desirable to attract? We do not apologise for this reiteration, because it is the fundamental subject now facing librarians. We are not in the least moved by a comment in a contemporary that we are decrying libraries when we assert, and in spite of him we do assert, that fiction issues nearly all over London show a decline. That decline, we repeat, is due to the slight increase in the employment of readers, and to cheap fiction libraries. What the public librarian has to decide is if he shall compete with such libraries or more definitely diverge from them. If a middle course is preferred—as it usually is by Britons—what is that course? Ultimately, is the educated reader to be the standard for whom the library works, or the uneducated? Or, to put it another way, is the librarian in any way responsible for the quality of the books his community reads? Our readers, young and not so young, are invited to help us to answers to these live questions.

This paper examines the predictive content of financial variables above and beyond past GDP growth in a small open economy in the Eurozone. We aim to clarify potential differences in forecasting economic activity during periods of steady growth and economic turbulence.

The out-of-sample forecasting analysis is conducted recursively for two different time periods: the steady growth period from 2004:1 to 2007:4 and the financial crisis period from 2008:1 to 2011:2.

Our results from Finland suggest that the proper choice of forecasting variables relates to general economic conditions. During steady economic growth, the preferable financial indicator is the short-term interest rate combined with past growth. However, during economic turbulence, the traditional term spread and stock returns are more important in forecasting GDP growth.

The results highlight the importance of long-term interest rates in determining the level of the term spread when the central bank implements a zero interest rate policy. Moreover, during economic turbulence, stock markets are able to signal the expected effects of unconventional monetary policy on GDP growth.

Presents results of an investigation of the inflation‐hedging characteristics of UK property. Evaluates the various methods of decomposing inflation into its “expected” and “unexpected” components, using new time series data on inflation expectations produced by a questionnaire survey of informed market participants. Utilizes the power and suitability of causality and cointegration analysis to examine the relationship between inflation and property returns. Analyses the sensitivity of the results about the hedging capabilities of property to the removal valuation induced “smoothing” from property returns. Concludes that property is best seen as offering hedging characteristics that are only revealed in the long run.

It is widely accepted that equity return volatility increases more following negative shocks rather than positive shocks. However, much of value‐at‐risk (VaR) analysis relies on the assumption that returns are normally distributed (a symmetric distribution). This article considers the effect of asymmetries on the evaluation and accuracy of VaR by comparing estimates based on various models.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the long-memory behaviour of South African real estate investment trusts (SAREITs).

The study employs a battery of advanced techniques to examine the behaviour of returns of 29 SAREIT equities listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The authors analysed daily closing prices covering different periods up to 21 May 2016. The results provide support for long memory in majority of SAREIT returns.

The finding of negative fractional integration parameters provides evidence of anti-persistence in SAREIT returns.

It is recommended that the regulatory authorities adopt technologies that allow a more effective, faster means to disseminate information, and improve the electronic trading mechanism that facilitates quicker price adjustment to news entering the market.

The paper determines the fractional differencing (long-memory) parameter for SAREITs and adds value to the existing body of knowledge.

This paper aims to examine the dynamic of volatility of Malaysian listed property companies within pan-Asian public property markets based on different volatility perspective over the past 18 years, especially during the global financial crisis (GFC).

This study uses several statistical methods and formulas for analysing the dynamic of volatility of Malaysian listed property companies such as exponential generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (EGARCH) and Markov-switching (MS) EGARCH. The MS-EGARCH model provides new insights on the volatility dynamics of Malaysian listed property companies compared to conventional volatility modelling techniques, particularly EGARCH. Additionally, this paper will analyse the volatility movement based on three different sub-periods such as pre-GFC, GFC and post-GFC.

The findings reveal that the markets perform differently under different volatility conditions. Moreover, the application of MS-EGARCH provides a different view on the volatility dynamics compared to the conventional EGARCH model, as MS-EGARCH provides more comprehensive findings, especially during extreme market conditions.

This study contributes to the literature on the dynamics of Malaysian listed property companies within pan-Asian countries, as the approach for assessing the volatility performance based on different volatility conditions is less explored by previous researchers.